The Black Ships
by freifraufischer
Summary: A few weeks before Christmas, late in the Bartlet Presidency, a fleet of interstellar refugees arrive at Earth and changed the world. But is it the end of the saga, or the beginning of a much more complicated one? Set in BSG's second season after Epiphanies but before Sacrefices, and in the West Wing's mid sixth season vaguely after Liftoff. Roslin/Adama, with some Roslin/Zarek.
1. Chapter 1

Laura Roslin was standing at a window on _Colonial One_ listening to Billy read off the latest supply figures and population statistics. They were always variations off the same tone, limited water, limited food, limited medicine, a few deaths, and fewer births. She'd started to think of it privately as the butcher's bill. How much did humanity have to pay for its sins before the gods decided they had paid enough?

She really should have been listening more closely. For all she knew Billy could have been telling her a giant space dragon has eaten the _Rising Star_ and she probably wouldn't notice. A few times her aide had said something similar just to see if the President was paying attention, a tactic Laura guessed Billy had picked up from Tory Foster. Still, she could see the _Rising Star_ out the viewing port and it seemed to be intact so she did not need to worry about that particular crisis. In the distance at the edge of the fleet, she could see a flash of light and just make out the outline of a returning scout Raptor.

It never ceased to amaze her that she had gained enough understanding of military hardware that she could now tell a Raptor from a Viper from a refrigerator at this distance. Richard Adar would have found the thought amusing, yet something else to tease her about after an evening making love. She had begun to wonder near the end if he really did think very highly of her, or if he was simply humoring her for political advantage, or to just get her into his bed. Those thoughts were some of the things she kept locked deeply away in the quiet recesses of her mind, along with long forgotten lesson plans, and scores to all those Pyramid games the President had made her watch; artifacts of another life, which now did not even feel as if it was her own.

Turning around when she heard Billy stop speaking she smiled at the young man, half her son and half her aide, still the only family she had in this sad and unreal world. "Can you arrange for Captain Thrace to meet with me?"

Billy had a sudden look of near alarm. Laura had to chuckle herself at what she knew he must be thinking. "I'm not plotting anymore covert military operations, I promise."

He nodded, as he stood, still so earnest. "Of course, Madam President. I'll do it right away."

She shook her head, "No, have my shuttle prepped; I'll go to her this time."

After all, there was a reasonable chance the Viper pilot would turn her down. After all, the last time she'd made a private request of Starbuck it had cost the young woman more then either had anticipated at the time.

"Isn't Advent a penitential season?" President Josiah Bartlet said while still stooped over the Resolute Desk flipping through a stack of papers that CJ knew included the presidential declaration of National Federal Reserve Day and Choking Hazard Awareness Month.

The White House Chief of Staff smiled, but groaned inwardly. CJ glanced back to see where a chair was, she suspected she was about to be regaled for at least twenty minutes about something to do with the upcoming holiday season - perhaps some element of the economics would be involved… or there was always the off chance he was going to tell a story about how Ellie had like to swallow Legos as a child. Regardless, it was never a good sign when the President asked questions he already knew the answers to.

The President had been in a dismal mood all morning, in part because his oldest daughter Liz had announced that her husband Doug wanted to take the family to Aruba over Christmas. The family's patriarch had been muttering all morning about how Christmas was not really Christmas if there wasn't even the slightest chance of there actually being snow. Or if the president wasn't going to see his grandchildren…but that was another issue entirely.

"Why can't I skip at least seventeen of the thirty-five Christmas parties that are on my schedule for the next month and tell them I am at home alone pondering the myriad of my sins?"

"Because most people don't know the definition of the word myriad, sir? I'm also afraid they might believe you. I think there is still time to change the White House Christmas card though… a nice image of self-flagellation perhaps?"

He stared at her over the rims of his glasses. "Claudia Jean, has anyone ever told you sarcasm can be dangerous to your employment?"

"Many times, Mr. President, many times." The Chief of Staff shot a sassy grin at the President.

"And yet you persist?"

"My father always said I had a strange fascination with banging my head against walls as a child."

"Pardon me, Mr. President, CJ" a head popped in the door of the Oval office. The head belong to Charlie Young, the one time assistant to the President who now worked in CJ's office. "Commander Harper says she needs you in the Situation Room."

The President glanced over at CJ as he began rounding his desk. "Saved by the crisis."

She smiled and as they passed by Charlie she whispered, "I owe you big time."

"Don't you always?" Charlie smiled knowingly as she left the Oval office.

CJ fell into step behind the President. It always amazed her how in this bustling and busy building everyone stood as the President passed. Jed Bartlet attempted to smile, nod, and greet every passer by even as he walked briskly towards what was certainly a serious military situation. Not that he got any of the names correct, but several were close and that was part of his charm.

"ATTEN-HUT!" The voice of a Marine lieutenant bellowed as they walked through the situation room door, but Jed Bartlet waved them off. Whereas the rest of the White House felt like an overcrowded office space or a neo-classical southern mansion, the situation room always reminded CJ of the _Starship Enterprise_, especially now that there was giant map of the northern hemisphere including earth orbit on the big projection monitor. The situation room was dark, with computer monitors and military aides bustling about all under the direction of Commander Kate Harper, the deputy national security adviser.

"What's going on, ladies and gentlemen?"

In her previous position, CJ had never actually been in the situation room. It's very purpose was the have all of the available information at the command of those around this table, but as Press Secretary she had had to be purposely ill informed. She still felt a bit like she didn't belong in this room. It had been the domain of her predecessor Leo McGarry, especially given that, CJ noted as she quickly scanned the room, there were precisely three women around the table; her, Harper, and a navy lieutenant who looked all of twenty years old standing against one of the walls—not yet important enough to make it to the table.

"Mr. President," Kate Harper began, "Approximately twenty minutes ago North American Aerospace Defense Command out of Cheyenne Mountain began picking up an unusual track coming in from just inside the orbit of Mars."

As she spoke, on the center monitor behind the blond naval officer, displayed a small representation of the solar system. Suddenly CJ was struggling to remember whatever basic astronomy she knew that didn't involve a papier-mâché model of Neptune made when she was eleven, or the fact that Pluto had recently been downgraded to junior-petite-not-quite-planet status by a group of scientists with way too much time on their hands.

"Are we talking about a near earth asteroid? I didn't know we had sensors looking out that far." Jed asked. CJ was momentarily thankful for his above average geekyness.

A man in a bad suit halfway down the table leaned in. "They are experimental satellites that only came online in the last two weeks. We were hoping to use them to map all the earth crossing asteroids as part of an early warning system."

"And you've found your first? If it's near Mars orbit shouldn't that qualify as worrying and not a crisis?"

This time Kate piped up, "It would be sir, except this object came in towards Earth at a high rate of speed and than pulled into orbit, making several course corrections that the boys at NASA who know a lot more about orbital physics than I do assure me aren't natural."

That really got Jed's attention, and CJ's as well. "So we are talking about a UFO?"

There was some uncomfortable shifting around the room, and one of the Air Force generals spoke up. "We don't like to use that term, sir."

"But it's an essentially valid one, Mr. President," Kate added in after glancing at the general. "Once in orbit the contact made five rotations. We were about to get a visual identification from the International Space Station crew when it disappeared."

"Disappeared as in crashed?"

"No sir, as in disappeared."

"CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office agree that it has the profile of a surveillance or recon mission." Kate said, putting a heavy weight into her tone. The tone was the one she had learned to communicate in with the President when she really wanted him to hear what she was saying.

CJ spoke up for the first time, "Could this have been a computer glitch, or something of ours that NORAD just didn't know was in the air?" She shot a hard look down the table at the Air Force Chief of Staff. CJ had learned not to trust certain parts of the Department of Defense to be forth coming with information about classified projects.

"No ma'am, it's not our bird."

The President tapped his pen absently on the table. "Opinions?"

The silence around the room was deafening, as not a single officer wanted to be the first one to say what was on everyone's mind until the blond NSA deputy spoke up again with the weight of knowing she was saying sounded crazy. "Aliens, sir. I'm pretty sure this was aliens."

Laura Roslin sat in the wardroom on the _Battlestar Galactica_ with her eyes closed, listening to the hum of the great ship, and taking the briefest of moments available to her to center her thoughts. The heavy pressure door opened, Captain Kara Thrace stepped in looking a bit more the worse for wear in a flight suit half-unzipped, and her hair brushed back. The pilot appearing like she desperately needed a shower.

"You wanted to see me, ma'am?"

It was obvious to Laura that the younger woman remembered as well as she did the last private conversation they'd had in this particular room, and what it had cost her. The young warrior looked almost like she wanted to run away from the President's gaze as if it was a flight of oncoming Cylon raiders. Except Starbuck didn't run from a fight. "Yes, please take a seat. I'll try to be brief; I understand you just got off duty."

The Viper pilot sat down, still obviously wary of the President's gaze and what she might want.

"Captain Adama's duties here on _Galactica_ have made it very difficult for him to work as my military adviser." She made a vague motion towards no direction in particular, "And I think he's not very happy with that job anyway. Unfortunately I still rather desperately need someone to keep me from tripping over military protocol and affairs…"

Starbuck's eyes grew wide and she laughed as she answered, "And you picked me to help you understand military protocol? You've definitely got the wrong girl, ma'am."

Laura smiled and nodded, having expected that reaction. "I know you like to flaunt the rules from time to time, but you are smart and loyal and you speak truth to power. That is something more valuable to me than anything you can imagine."

"Have you talked to Lee about this, ma'am."

"I will, when the time comes."

Just then, the phone on the wall rang and Roslin got up herself to answer it, waving off Starbuck back to her seat. "Yes, this is me, Admiral."

"Madam President, there is something up here you should see. One of our recon missions found a planet. An inhabited planet."

William Adama raised an eyebrow when Roslin and Starbuck arrived in CIC together, but let that bit of curiosity rest for the moment, sorting through yet another stack of reconnaissance photos taken by the returning Raptor. As the President and his young protégée stepped down into the well of the great battlestar's control center, he passed a set of photos over to Roslin. "One of our fleet recon missions' checking out new jump coordinates stumbled on this system: Eight planets, only one in the inhabitable range, with a large mineral rich asteroid belt. Our pilot thought that it would make a good mining stopover when she picked up low band radio traffic coming from the inner system."

"A distress signal? A Cylon base?" Roslin took the photos and started holding them up to the light. He knew she was seeing what he did. The photo was taken on the dark side of the planet, and the continents were lit up with activity in mostly coastal cities.

"No, Madame President, much heavier volume than just a distress signal. There is an entire civilization down there, though Racetrack did say she had to dodge a great deal of space junk in orbit and primitive artificial satellites."

Laura Roslin looked over her glasses, and not for the first time, Bill Adama thought she was communicating something to him that he could only half read. "I assume you have launched another recon mission to get a better sense of the planet?"

"Two Raptors are taking off as we speak to do a couple of more close flybys and hopefully land."

Laura tapped the photos between her hands, processing the information. "We should send one to check out the asteroid belt as well. We still need the mineral resources desperately. Tell your people good hunting, and be careful." She nodded and held his gaze.

The Admiral returned her nod. "They will."

**~**~**

For the second time in a day CJ followed the President into the situation room, this time much more crowded with Air Force blue uniforms including a few she only vaguely recognized. At one end of the room General Casey, the head of US Space Command, was talking in hushed tones with the NASA administrator, and on one of the video monitor screens was the commander of the International Space Station whom CJ had met when the woman was testifying on Capital Hill two years before. Also joining them was Dr. Nancy McNally, the National Security Adviser and an elegant looking black woman in an evening gown, who it seems, had cut short a formal affair.

"Why is it that you always seem to make me feel under dressed at international crisis, Nancy?" The President teased.

"Because I want to look like an idiot if the world ends, Mr. President." She said it deadpan and CJ wasn't sure she was joking.

After most of the people sat down at the table with the President, Kate Harper remained standing by the giant briefing screen. "They are back. Approximately half an hour ago, US Space Command began tracking two new contacts acting similarly to the first one. This time they did fly past the ISS, and Dr. Jordan's crew were able to make visual identification. We are dealing with an artificial craft somewhere between ten and twenty meters in length. There is some evidence that they are communicating with each other but the frequency spectrum they are using is not something we have a capability to pick up."

"I assume someone is working on that now?" The President asked mildly. "Not that we'll likely to be able to understand them, but still."

McNally nodded, "NSA is working on it, Mr. President."

"I suppose it's too late to suggest that this might be the NORAD Santa tracking program?" CJ said almost desperately, but more as a joke, though her eyes were focused on Kate Harper who had just picked up a phone and was talking quietly.

The feeble joke got at least one smile though, the Air Force Chief of Staff shook his head, "Santa doesn't take off for several weeks."

Jed Bartlet looked over at CJ with a mildly chiding look, "So we can agree it's not Father Christmas, and we already know Commander Harper thinks it's little green men… are there any other thoughts at the table as to what this might be?"

Nancy nodded her head back at the blond naval officer still on the phone. "I'm afraid I agree with Kate, this doesn't look like anything the Chinese or the Russians could pull off and they're the only other candidates. In fact the flights of our mystery contacts have taken them over sensitive instillations nearly all over the globe."

"Is this the point in our little story when Jeff Goldblum is supposed to tell us that he's hacked into the alien's computer system?" Bartlet asked in mild frustration.

"It scares me that you've seen that movie, sir," CJ put in.

"I had a fourteen year old daughter at the time."

Harper had hung up the receiver by now and stepped closer to the table. "We might know sooner than we thought, sir. NORAD has just reported that one of the contacts collided with a dead Russian weather satellite over Greenland. It seems to be falling like a stone."

**~**~**

"I really have to stop volunteering for these missions, sir!" Chief Galen Tyrol shouted as the rest of the survey team braced for impact as Racetrack was trying desperately to regain some semblance of control over the falling Raptor.

Apollo was desperately calling up their survey photos looking for a place to make an emergency landing. "There is an air base on the east coast of the continent; it looks like it has enough of a runway for us to make a hard landing."

Lieutenant Margaret 'Racetrack' Edmonson shook her head, "Ain't going to be any other kind right now, Captain." She was using all her strength to hold the Raptor steady and on the track Apollo had set into the computer. In the approaching darkness, she could see a long runway lit up by lights. The space ship touched down hard and skidded sideways for a thousand feet. "OH FRAK!"

Through the front windscreen were the lights of a plane moving straight at them from the other end of the runway, its pilot desperately trying to pull the heavy atmospheric fighter into the air. Everyone in the Raptor ducked instinctively, though it wouldn't really matter much if the two vehicles collided. Each of them felt the crashed Raptor rock as the fighter just barely cleared top of their heads.

In the distance, Apollo could see the headlights of trucks and the forms of troops running towards them.

"So much for subtly."

… to be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

Kate Harper stood in the middle of Andrews Air Force Base's longest runway, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her jacket against the late November chill off the Maryland coast. The crash had occurred around 2300 hours the night before, the ground crew had spent all night cleaning up the debris and moving the crashed vehicle inside a hanger before the over flight of a Chinese spy satellite the next morning at 0700 hours. The best way to hide something was not to put tarp over it after all; it was to get it inside a building. All that remained as evidence of the event were scorch marks and deep gouges in the concrete runway that would have to be repaired before the runway could be used again for normal operations.

"That's what I call a hard landing."

Kate turned around to see Leo McGarry, the former White House Chief of Staff, standing behind her with a grim look on his face belied by a twinkle in his eyes. He was still recovering from the heart attack that had driven him from his day-to-day duties within the Bartlet Administration, but he was still too close an advisor to the President not to be involved in something this big. His normally well-tailored suit hung off his frame giving him a slightly skeletal look that made Harper wince.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Commander."

"You look like hell warmed over, Leo."

"Always big on flattery, aren't you, Commander Harper?" In truth they hadn't gotten along well when they met, sniping at each other over the Middle East peace talks that had finally brought the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Leo had believed she was out to glorify herself and push an agenda. As it had turned out, she was pushing the President's agenda. Still, she respected him, such things were in the past now, and Kate had grown to respect life long politician.

"Well, I am the first American official in a hundred and forty years to threaten to invade Canada. And I thought that was being subtle and generous," she teased and gave him a slight smile. "I didn't know you were in on this."

"The President asked me to help out. He thought you could use another set of eyes in the interrogation."

"I'd prefer to think of it as an interview rather than an interrogation." It was a difference without a distinction in most cases, but Kate Harper was a former CIA agent and she though of an interrogation as being a lot less pleasant than she hoped this would be. She teased more as they began to walk towards the hanger, "Are we playing good-cop bad-cop? Which one of us is which?"

"You are prettier than I am, Commander. I think that makes you the good-cop."

"Even with the female detainees?"

"There are female little green men? What did the Air Force do, turn them upside down and check?"

"If there were no little green women, where do you think all the little green men would come from?" She liked Leo, but he was occasionally old-fashioned and it was worth teasing him over. "They actually aren't green. In fact… they look human. I think we won't know for certain until we run some medical tests. The President has explicitly told us that he wants their consent before we go poking at them."

"Their consent? Don't tell me they really do speak English in outer space."

She chuckled, and shook her head. "They haven't spoken a word. Two men, two women. One of the women took a nasty bump to the head in the crash."

"This is going to be an interesting conversation."

**~**~**

They were moved inside a largely empty hanger with several dozen uniformed guards standing in a circle around them. At the far end of the hanger, a swarm of uniformed technicians, that reminded Apollo of green camouflage clad ants, were examining the Raptor. Their side arms had been confiscated just after the crash but they were left relatively unmolested. While Lee watched the natives, Racetrack had taken to pacing behind him and the Chief was on the ground holding a bandage to Cally's head. They'd all followed his lead and did not speak to the guards or any of the military officers who tried to question them.

The hanger doors opened just a bit, letting in the morning sun as well as two figures, an older man and a blond woman in civilian clothing. They walked towards the group of Colonials exchanging a few words that at this distance were impossible to make out. They showed identification to the guards, who let them into the cordoned-off area.

"Now these look like people in charge," Racetrack muttered just low enough for Apollo to hear.

He just nodded, and the blond began to speak. "My name is Commander Kate Harper. I'm the Deputy National Security Advisor for the United States. This is Leo McGarry, Senior Advisor to the President. I apologize that your treatment has not been as welcoming as we'd have liked, but you must understand that we haven't had contact before with people from another world, and have many questions."

_I'll bet you do, Commander_, Apollo thought to himself. His only response was to look at her eyes.

"Welcome to Earth," the older man put in almost as an afterthought.

That drew all the Colonials attention and both Tyrol and Racetrack muttered at the same time, "Oh my gods…"

Harper and McGarry exchanged a glance, and Apollo decided that speaking was better than not speaking at this point. "My name is Captain Lee Adama of the Colonial Fleet. This is Lieutenant Margaret Edmondson whose ship your people are taking apart, Chief Galen Tyrol, and Specialist Cally Henderson. We have been looking for the last remnants of humanity for a very long time."

The man whistled and the woman exhaled. "This just got much more complicated."

**~**~**

"So they really are aliens?" Jed Bartlet asked with a degree of wonder and incredulity, leaning against the front of the Resolute Desk with his arms folded. The room was filled with only a few of his closest advisors. CJ and Kate, both sitting on one side of the room with intense looks on their faces and poses that mirrored each other—not for first time did Jed marvel at how amazing these women were—while on the other side of the room were Toby Ziegler, his Communications Director and his oldest friend, Leo McGarry whom he had brought in after the crash.

"Not exactly aliens, sir," Kate explained from one of the couches in the center of the Oval Office. "They claim to be humans from outer space. They say that they have a fleet with approximately 50,000 survivors from a mass genocide that destroyed their civilization, the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. They seem to believe… that we are the thirteenth."

"This sounds like the plot to a cheesy science fiction show," CJ put in from the side.

"I'm not sure I'd call anything related to genocide cheesy," Toby corrected. He was after all the observant Jew in the room.

"Granted." CJ nodded.

"At any rate," Kate interrupted to get them back on track, "they say they were on a survey mission and crashed. They requested access to their ship so they could contact their … mother ship or whatever. There is a complicating factor in that the Air Force is practically disassembling it as we speak. I tried to get them to stop, but Secretary Hutchinson not so kindly reminded me that I wasn't in the chain of command."

The President narrowed his eyes. "CJ, please go give the Secretary of Defense a call and remind him that I am the chain of command."

"Yes, sir."

"This is definitely one of those cases where 'you break it, you buy it' applies."

"Can we decide on a better word to call these people?" CJ began. "Space people sounds silly and aliens is hostile and vaguely… ridiculous."

"We could perhaps call them by what they call themselves, rather than carrying on the great western tradition of giving new names to people and places that already have them." Toby waved his hand vaguely through the air as if to indicate North America.

"Colonial? And that doesn't call up other great western traditions to you? Not to mention that as soon as this gets out people are going to think we are being invaded. We are going to have to think about the public reaction to this sooner rather than later." Once a press secretary always a press secretary.

"Why do we have to go public at all? There are legitimate national security reasons to keep this under wraps," Kate said.

"Sometimes you are too spooky for your own good, did you know that Kate?" CJ tilted her head to the side to look at Harper with a mixture of incredulity and admiration.

It wasn't the first time Harper's covert past had come up. She practically lived the words Top Secret. The President decided to cut off the potential argument between the two of them. "Commander, do you seriously believe that as soon as several dozen ships…"

"As many as a hundred from what I gathered, Sir."

"Do you seriously believe that as soon as a large number of space ships enter orbit that there won't be SETI scientists all over the globe breaking out champagne and readying press releases? They've already stated that their first move upon extraterrestrial contact would be to make a public announcement because for some bizarre idea they think that it would belong to the entire globe and not just one nation."

"It also is a safeguard in case someone in government decides to try and make them disappear," Kate added with a nod.

"They've actually thought about that?" Toby asked.

"I can't imagine why they don't trust the Central Intelligence Agency," Jed mumbled.

Leo spoke up for the first time. "I agree with Commander Harper. We should be careful how much of our culture we expose these people to and how much contact we allow them with Earth. Carefully limit it."

Bartlet shook his head. "I'm not going down on the same page with Tokugawa Yoshinobu."

"You won't if that's as hard to spell as it sounds like it is," CJ commented.

"The 15th Tokugawa Shogun…" Bartlet was greeted with blank stares. "Commander Harper, please tell me they still teach naval history at Annapolis."

"Last I checked, sir, but it's threatening to be replaced by underwater basket weaving."

The President nodded, choosing to ignore the errant bit of sarcasm. "Would you care to explain to those people who Tokugawa Yoshinobu was?"

Kate tilted her head to the side, and glanced at the senior staff, as if she was mentally accessing some file in the hard drive of her brain. "In 1853 four ships, the _Mississippi_, _Plymouth_, _Saratoga_, and _Susquehanna_ under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Yokosuka, Japan. Yoshinobu was the ruling shogun in Japan at the time. His government's policies excluded all foreigners form the islands except a few Dutch and Portuguese trading vessels with extremely restricted access. Two hundred years of isolation and relative peace were effectively ended by the U.S. Navy's military superiority. The Japanese called them the Black Ships because of their color and the smoke that billowed from their steam engines."

"Four years later the shogun was out of a job in the Meiji Restoration that revolutionized Japanese culture," the President added.

"And indirectly led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of World War II," Kate added to the President's explanation.

"We can't stick our heads in the sand, Leo, or else that fleet will be our own Black Ships. They could sit in orbit and dominate this planet and we would have little to say in the matter. We don't have the luxury of taking this slowly." Jed looked around the room. "Not to mention that we have a moral imperative not to turn away people in need."

… to be continued …


	3. Chapter 3

"Does anyone have a seven-pronged screwdriver?" a voice called out from the air force crew trying to re-assemble the parts of the crashed space ship they had been disassembling.

"How did you get it out to start with?"

"Damned if I know."

From a distance, CJ Cregg winced as she overheard the discussion at one end of the Andrews Air Force Base hanger. They were working under the influences of one of the alien-human-whatever crew of the ship, who kept muttering about what she presumed was something analogous to monkeys with power tools. Some things were universal, even if the metaphors were unfamiliar.

Behind her she could hear the distinctive footsteps of Josh Lyman stopping short, and she turned. "Coming, mon petit-frère?" CJ teased with a raised eyebrow, waiting four, three, two, one…

"That's a space ship."

"Yes, Josh, it is."

"From space."

"That's generally where they come from."

"You mean this isn't a joke?"

"You didn't believe the President?"

"I thought maybe it was a practical joke. Something Donna put him up to…"

"You thought Donna put the President up to telling you there were aliens out at Andrews? And this didn't seem like a slightly implausible theory to you when you came up with it?"

He began walking again to catch up with her. "Slightly more plausible than going down to Andrews to help arrange meetings with real aliens. Speaking of, where are the little gray guys?"

"We're having them dissected as we speak," Kate Harper said with such a deadpan expression that CJ wondered for a moment if it was true, until she remembered as Chief of Staff she probably would have been told about that. Kate held the straight face for just a bit longer before breaking out in a grin. "You should see the side arms they were carrying."

Kate picked one up off a table to show it to CJ. "This looks like a standard mid-caliber automatic pistol. Even a bit archaic with the wooden grips. But this," Kate pointed to a large boxy part under the barrel, "is a miniature rocket launcher. We've experimented with something like this but they've always turned out to be spectacular flops that tended to set the shooter's clothes on fire or bounce off the target because they don't gain enough speed as they leave the barrel."

"You know, Kate, sometimes I think you're? a scary scary woman." CJ shook her head.

"It's my job to be scary, CJ." Kate turned a wiry smile on the other woman.

"Hey, where are the aliens?" Josh repeated his question after another few minutes of staring at the wrecked ship and CJ would bet missing the conversation about weapons entirely.

Kate nodded towards the other side of the hanger. "The man and the woman in solid green over there are trying to get their communications gear fixed with the dubious help of the Air Force." Kate turned and nodded in another direction where a young woman in a flight suit was talking to another man in green. "Those are the officers. She's the pilot, and he seems to be in charge. He says his name is Captain Lee Adama, but they call him Apollo."

CJ shot a glance at Kate and the other woman smiled, both thinking the same thing at the same time, but deciding to keep it at least marginally professional for a moment, "Do you think they are as human as they look?"

"Does it matter when they look like that?" Kate asked.

"Could the two of you stop ogling the alien like a pair of doe-eyed school girls? It's disturbing," Josh complained.

"We weren't ogling," CJ corrected. "We were discussing anatomy."

Josh turned around 360 degrees as if looking for an ally, but none was near. "Why is it that when strange alien men from outer space come down to steal our women, no one else is alarmed?"

"I'm pretty sure lots of people are alarmed right now, Josh."

"Isn't alien men from outer space redundant?" Kate tilted her head to the side as if to emphasize the question.

"And more importantly, how often have you encountered this problem?" CJ grinned.

"I have a vivid imagination."

"Of course you do."

The banter quieted then as Leo and the subject of the women's attentions started walking over. Apollo explained, "Chief Tyrol says he thinks he can get the radio working in about an hour. We'll be sending for new orders. This was only supposed to be a survey mission and I don't have the people here for a diplomatic protocol."

"And then what?" Josh asked without bothering to be introduced.

"And then we wait for my government to decide what to do."

"If that takes as long in space as it does on Earth that might be a while."

Lee smiled. "I don't know, the Admiral and the President settle their disagreements pretty quickly. Most of the time."

**~**~**

"Earth? It really is Earth?" Laura asked with a slightly disbelieving expression.

Adama wasn't sure he blamed her. They'd been searching for the place for so long that it seemed hard to believe they'd actually stumbled upon it. "That's what the locals claim," Adama said as he sat down behind his desk once it became clear that the President was going to remain standing. or pacing as the case may be. _Like a caged cat_, Adama thought to himself. "Lee has made contact with one of the major nation-states."

She raised an eyebrow over her glasses. "As in they are holding the survey team?"

"That would be my interpretation."

"If they don't have a global government I would rather not deal with just once until we know what the political situation is down there."

"We may not have a choice if they are holding our people."

"I am aware of that, Bill."

Her use of his first name hung in the air for a moment as if it was a reminder of a conversation the two of them both knew they needed to have at some point, but were always deferring. Roslin stopped pacing after a moment before cracking a small smile, and than bursting out into a fit of laughter.

"Something funny?"

"This is a diplomatic incident."

Adama nodded, not quite following, but wondering if perhaps this was her way of relieving stress. It wasn't a bad way, he thought.

"The first one of my presidency."

"Congratulations?"

This time when she burst out laughing again, it was infectious, and soon despite the weight of everything and despite the fact that his son was trapped down there, and despite the two of them being who they were… they both needed to laugh.

Laura finally sobered after a few minutes. "I'm going to have to talk to the Quorum."

"Better you than me."

**~**~**

Bill had left the emergency meeting of the Quorum half way through, not for the first time promising himself he'd never attend another session. The Quorum was Roslin's world and she was welcome to it. Adama had other business to attend to anyway. They were a petty and distrustful lot who only seemed to trust the President slightly more than they trusted him…and they didn't trust him at all. When he left, they were voting on which of their number would accompany the President to the surface.

The Admiral hadn't liked the idea of the President going down to the surface herself to start with, and liked it even less now adding one of those sycophants to the mix. The only way it could get worse in his mind would be if the press was traveling with them. Roslin herself had shot that down, much to his satisfaction.

There were moments when Bill Adama knew he was in love with Laura Roslin, whether he would admit it to anyone else or not, and there were moments when he knew, with equal passion, she was completely insane. What really confused the man, though, was when he felt both emotions at the same time.

He could probably let the conflicted feelings play out on their own were it not for her insinuating herself with those he loved and cared deeply about. When he was honest with himself he would admit that the real reason he had deposed and arrested Roslin a few months before was his realization that she could get at those closest to him.

Part of him wasn't surprised, and he was certainly relieved, that the relationship between Roslin and Lee had cooled. He had always known his son had the habit of putting people on pedestals, which were too high and very easy fallen from. Still, he wasn't sure if he was happy her influence over Lee had waned. He was even less sure when he discovered she had set her sights on Starbuck. Starbuck was almost more his child than Lee was, or at least than Lee would let himself be. One of the tools Roslin used to control those around her was insinuating herself as a mother figure. She had virtually done so with the entire fleet. Moreover, if there was anyone who needed a mother, it was Kara Thrace.

Arriving at the pilot's quarters he knocked once before entering with a package under his arm. Starbuck was standing at her locker, half dressed in her blues, her jacket hanging from one of the upper bunks. She jumped when she saw him, as if he had caught her doing something wrong. In her hands, she was fumbling with the wrapping of two small idols.

She had been praying. Worse yet, she had thought he would disapprove. The Admiral's secularism had become an issue in the fleet and in the public only when Roslin had made her faith a weapon against him. It wasn't that he disapproved of religion; in a way he admired it, but what he objected to was faith dragged into the public sphere.

Adama sat down on one of the lower bunks. "You shouldn't be ashamed of your faith."

It was an offer to discuss the subject, but she didn't take him up on the opportunity to debate religion. "Did you need something, sir?"

He smiled and offered her a small package. "Presidential military aides wear gold braid on their shoulders. If you're going down there with her you should at least look the part."

She took the package and turned it over in her hand, as if wanting to say something. When it didn't come, Adama stood again. "Be careful, Kara."

As he reached the door, she finally spoke, "We'll bring him home, sir."

"I know you will."

Adama shut the door, turned, and was almost immediately challenged by Doc Cottle, his irascible Chief Medical Officer. "Do you have any idea what a bastard you are, Bill?"

"Only half the one you are most of the time."

"Do you have to act like a disappointed father?"

"Starbuck hasn't done anything for me to be disappointed in."

"Yet you sit there and give her those big eyes and that manly pout you specialize in when you catch her in prayer."

"It's not her faith I disapprove of. It's how that woman uses her faith to manipulate her."

"Or how 'that woman' is using you by proxy? I'm not sure which of you is worse, Roslin who knows she's manipulating people or you who pretends he isn't. Either way I wish I could just lock the two of you in a room together for a week so that you could sort out your feelings without the rest of it. Might solve many problems."

The doctor turned and walked away without letting the Admiral respond.

Laura was glad to see Admiral Adama walking into the flight deck in time to say his goodbyes before they left for the planet. Behind her Tom Zarek was milling around trying to make conversation with some of the _Galactica _crew like a normal politician and discovering not for the first time that this was one ship on the fleet where he had few allies. This was definitely Laura Roslin's territory, and part of her took a bit of pleasure in seeing him slightly off his footing.

"I thought you might miss us off, Admiral." She smiled at Adama as he approached.

"One of the advantages to these stars. Ships don't leave without my say-so." He looked past her and raised an eyebrow. "Zarek?"

"What's a diplomatic incident without a convicted terrorist there to make it all better?" She smiled. "Strange as it may sound, of my choices in the Quorum I think he was the lesser of twelve evils."

"If you say so." He paused. "Be careful down there, Laura."

The two Colonial leaders' eyes remained locked in silence for a long moment, before the tension became too much and one of them looked away. It was the Admiral who flinched under her gaze.

… to be continued …


	4. Chapter 4

Kate was, unsurprisingly, the first one in their group who spotted the incoming ships once they had received word from SPACECOM there were contacts inbound to Andrews. It took CJ a moment or two to spot what the commander was pointing at and when she did a tide of fear rose up in the pit of her stomach.

"It looks like it's falling like a brick," CJ whispered.

"Probably just the heat from re-entry," Kate explained.

In front of them was an Air Force band hastily assembled, with an honor guard in freshly pressed uniforms who really had no idea what they were there for other than that it had to be something important especially since President Josiah Bartlet was standing on the wind-blown runway waiting.

The four Colonials were standing in a row at parade rest. CJ was privately amazed at how much they looked and behaved like the US Air Force personnel swarming around them. When the craft got close enough, the White House Chief of Staff could make out it was another one of those transport craft with four sleek fighter craft in formation. As the transport began to slow and hover with the loud whine of an engine that made some in their party cover their ears, two of the fighters gained speed, shot over the crowd, and back up into the sky at high rate of ascent. The other two landed at the far end of the runway away from the crowd.

She noticed Kate's eyes follow the fighter craft for a moment. "Secretary Hutchinson better not want to take those apart too."

"Somehow I think our guests would object."

Turning their attention back to the now landed craft the honor guard laid out a red carpet to the door and formed on either side. CJ wasn't sure what she was expecting; the entire situation had already defied any predictions she might have made about it previously. Truthfully, alien contact was pretty far down on the list of things she had thought about much.

The first two forms out of the craft were clad in black, with helmets on, one a man and one a woman wearing the kind of close combat gear that the rapid response units of the Secret Service wore in the presidential motorcade. They looked around for a moment before taking up positions on either side of the craft's door and the next figure to emerge was definitely not what CJ was expecting.

The middle-aged woman was wearing a black suit with a pink blouse that CJ would expect from any member of Congress or person who had business at the White House. The woman had a mass of striking red hair and intense eyes that could be seen even at a distance behind a pair of glasses a lot like the ones in CJ's pocket now. Captain Adama stepped out of his formation and helped her off the wing of the craft and the two exchanged a few words before beginning to walk towards the waiting group from the White House.

Behind her, several other people emerged, including a man dressed unbelievably in a suit and tie. "Who would have thought the custom of tying little nooses around one's neck would be a universal constant," Bartlet said to no one in particular, as he walking towards the approaching Colonials, and CJ fell in behind him a step behind.

Apollo made the introductions. "President Josiah Bartlet of the United States of America, may I present President Laura Roslin of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

And two worlds met over a handshake.

Abigail Bartlet returned to Washington later than she had intended, after the Air Force re-routed her plane to an airbase in Virginia due to some spill on the runway at Andrews. She had spent a week in New Hampshire with Liz and the grandchildren recharging her batteries and wondering not for the first time why her entire life couldn't be made up of moments like those where she could forgot the press and the Secret Service and the trappings of her husband's office.

Yet as much as she loved the time away, she inevitably felt guilty. Her marriage was still rocky after Zoey's kidnapping but she loved and needed her husband and he her. Even without the multiple sclerosis, Jed would have pushed himself to exhaustion without someone to stop him; with the degenerative disease, she was sure her husband would work himself to death. With the multiple sclerosis, his body might not take the driving marathon of work his mind commanded him to do. There was always a scary balance between what his brain could do and what his body could survive, and she knew not to trust him to know those limits.

Even this late at night there were still people scurrying about in the West Wing, Abbey had quietly slipped upstairs to the Mansion—the part of the White House that held the First Family's living quarters—expecting it to be relatively deserted. Six years after they moved in it almost felt like home. Home with a serving staff and armed guards - though the armed guards were going to be with them for a long time after they had left the White House. In truth, the Secret Service had long blended into the background of her family life. After an agent lost her life protecting her daughter, the First Lady had started to grow fond and protective of them as well. Privacy was something she'd long forgotten existed, but she was still surprised when she saw a red-headed woman coming out of one of the guest bedrooms.

"Hello…" It wasn't unusual for there to be guests, but Abbey usually knew who they were, or at the very least when they were there.

The other woman smiled. "Hello, I'm sorry; I was just looking for a bathroom."

"There is one down the hall," Abbey said with a smile, being a gracious host, and extending her hand. "Abigail Bartlet."

"Laura Roslin," the other woman replied without recognition in her eyes as she shook Abbey's hand. Something nagged in the back of Abbey's mind, and it wasn't until the other woman had disappeared down the hall that she pinpointed it. Their houseguest had no idea who she was.

Slipping quietly into their rooms, she lifted the lid of a food tray left for the stewards to remove in the morning. Shaking her head and glancing over to see the light on in the bedroom, she leaned in the doorframe and for a moment watched her husband reading in bed. His glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, half dozen reports scattered around the bed.

"I leave for a week and you have the stewards bringing you cheesecake and read economic data in bed, what am I going to do with you Jed?"

He looked up at her with playfulness in his eyes. "I could make a few suggestions." That was rewarded with a chuckle from Abbey as she slid onto the side of the bed, still dressed. "Besides, it's not economics, it's proposals for extending the presidential line of succession in case the Cabinet is killed."

"That's morbid."

"It would be more morbid if you saw some of these plans."

"Aren't most mass disaster plans morbid? And futile? The Capitol Building blows up during the State of the Union and I know I'll be glad to be dead and not have the Secretary of Education running the country." Jed coughed, but Abbey continued, "What are the schemes?"

Jed waved his hand vaguely. "Most want to put the Governors in after the Cabinet, but none of them agree on an order. This one wants to do it by population, that one by order of entry into the Union, and this one wants to just do it alphabetically…. Which I will admit is my least favorite option."

A few months before the Governor of Alabama had suggested the Federal government, and Jed Bartlet in particular, were conspiring against his state when they released information on the country's third mad cow infection. Somehow, the President doubted the poor technician who had found the case had nothing better to do on his or her Friday night than test and retest rotten cow brains in order to destroy the Alabama cattle industry.

"Alabama, California… who's my other choice?"

"Delaware."

She shook her head. "Isn't that a little academic for you to be up reading this late at night?" Though in truth, something being obscure and academic never really stopped him before, and they both knew it.

"I just started to think about it."

"Jed, you know I can always tell when are trying to lie to me." She slipped under the covers with him, "Especially when I come home to find women who bear a vague resemblance to me sneaking around the halls."

"Is she sneaking?"

"Well, looking for a bathroom, but you know I have a suspicious mind."

"You have been spending too much time around Kate Harper again, haven't you?"

"Who is she, Jed?"

"Visiting dignitary."

"From where…?"

Jed took off his glasses and looked at her. "You are serious…"

"You aren't normally cagey about where are houseguests are from, Jed."

"Our houseguests aren't usually from outer space."

Abbey blinked, and her husband seemed gratified to have thrown her off balance. She thought for a moment that he was kidding and then decided that he probably wasn't given the self-satisfied smile on his face. "Hold that thought while I go slip out of this suit and get something to drink. I think I'm going to need it for this story."

True to her word the First Lady slipped out of bed and returned a few moments later with a glass of scotch.

"Now, are you seriously telling me that that woman with the very normal sounding name like Laura is an alien? Don't aliens usually have names with more vowels in them?"

"Isn't three enough? And you have four. I've always suspected you were secretly hiding something from me."

"Jed, are you sure this isn't a clumsy attempt to cover up an affair?"

"You think I have time for an affair?" Jed asked incredulously.

"Point. So this should be a good story."

"I'm not sure if good is how I'd describe it. Sad….maybe."

She raised an eyebrow, still not entirely sure she believed that the woman down the hall was an alien. "She looks rather human to me."

"They claim they are… they say that they are the remnants of a civilization called the Twelve Colonies of Kobol that lost some sort of genocidal war the details of which they are pretty vague about. They believe that we are their long lost brothers and have been searching for us."

"Brings new meaning to the lost tribes of Israel."

"But there were ten of them, not twelve."

"Details."

"Anyway, there is a fleet of fifty thousand refugees just outside the solar system, and the woman down the hall is their president." He smiled. "You will have to ask them what it's like to be governed by the Secretary of Education. Apparently, it was the cabinet position she held when the holocaust happened. She said she was 43rd in their line of succession—our line doesn't go down that far—and just happened to be traveling to a museum dedication at the time."

"Do we know for certain they are human?"

"No, President Roslin has agreed to physical exams to prove it. They are going down to Bethesda tomorrow."

"Can I tag along?" She was teasing him a bit, but there was an undercurrent of her own frustration and dissatisfaction with her life as the First Lady.

"Only if I can have my cheesecake, then you can go out and play with the other doctors."

"You are a hard man, Jed Bartlet, do you know that?"

He just smiled.

Lee Adama had not been able to sleep at all, despite the very nice bedroom the White House staff had provided him. Most of the rest of the delegation save Zarek, Starbuck, and himself had been settled in at guest quarters at the air base where they had landed. Lee felt incredibly out of his element in this world, and from the looks of it so did most everyone else, including Tom Zarek, though that shouldn't have surprised him. At his heart Zarek wasn't really a politician. He was a political criminal who had stepped into a power vacuum. In fact, there was only one person who seemed to be comfortable at all in any of this.

Apollo knocked lightly on the door to the room President Roslin was staying in and was a little surprised and embarrassed when she came to the door in a nightgown with a light robe that revealed more of her figure than one normally thought of politicians having. It wasn't the first time she had greeted him dressed like that, and it wasn't the first time he had noticed her figure, but as before, he drove those thoughts to the deepest shadows of his mind where they belonged.

"I can come back, Madam President."

"No need, I wasn't sleeping anyway, Captain Apollo. It's too quiet here; I miss the hum of the engines."

He smiled slightly, trying to catch her eyes before she turned and they escaped him. He had never been able to read Laura Roslin's intentions, be they personal or political, and he sometimes wondered if there was really much of a difference for her these days.

"I wanted to talk to you about these medical tests."

She smiled. "Are you and Captain Thrace nervous about them? Please don't destroy my illusions about my brave pilots and loyal advisers."

The last was said with a smile but something in Lee wondered if it was intended as a dig. "No ma'am. I was actually more concerned about you, and wondering if I could talk you out of participating in the exams yourself. I know that the cancer is in remission but I understand you are still weak and it might be best if they didn't discover that."

"Do you think I'm weak, Captain?"

The question hung in the air; it had hung in the air for a long time between them. Probably since the day she had surrendered to the military coup on _Colonial One._ Crafty, manipulative, motherly, there were many of the words he might use to describe Laura Roslin, but weak was not one of them. "No, ma'am. But it's not what I think that matters."

She smiled. "You sell yourself short."

"Is that why you sent me away, because I wasn't living up to your expectations?" The words were out of his mouth before he had the chance to pull them back. They were laced with pain and betrayal. He had given up everything for this woman, he had chosen her over his father, and now it felt like she was driving him away from her.

Lee wasn't entirely sure why, but something in him needed to be near this woman, needed her approval.

"I didn't send you away, Lee, you drove yourself away." Roslin brushed a bit of his hair with the tips of her fingers. "What you think matters, and you show it with every fiber of your being. Sometime in the last few months, I have disappointed you and you distanced yourself. I'm sorry I can't be that perfect person you want me to be. I made the choices I thought needed to be made for the survival of the Fleet, good or bad." Laura caught the young man's eyes and wondered if he really knew the moral scope of the choices she and his father had had to make over the last months. "I make mistakes because I'm human, and as your father would say, that's the definition of the species."

Lee didn't have anything to say to that, and she turned and walked away from him, continuing to speak.

"The cancer is in remission. As Doctor Cottle likes to tell me when he thinks I am too happy, it can and probably will come back. It can never hurt me, medically speaking, to have a second opinion from their doctors. I think it's more important right now that we prove our humanity than we prove our strength. We need these people's help… not their fear."

… to be continued …


	5. Chapter 5

When Laura Roslin first became the Superintendent of the Caprica City School System, she spent her days fighting the often-vicious political battles the kind a head of any large school district inevitably does; she spent her nights sitting at her mother's bedside in a hospital. Her mother's health had been declining for a long time, but during what Laura had thought was the height of her career her mother's life was quietly but slowly slipping away. Long after her mind had gone.

Sarah Roslin's cancer had robbed her of her formidable intellect early in the course of the disease, but an agonizing four years passed before it finally took her life. In the beginning of the vigils Laura had brought work to her mother's bedsides - test scores, budget proposals, union contracts, anything and everything that could distract her from the shell of a woman who had been such a force in her life lying powerless a few feet away.

As her mother's death lingered, Laura continued to bring the file folders, but they usually sat unread on a side table and she found herself more and more with the Sacred Scrolls, a copy of which one of her mother's friends had left at the bedside. Laura prayed to the gods every night for a year, not for a miracle, not for life, but for the relief of death finally to take her mother.

The day it did, Laura wasn't even on the planet, off visiting Tauron for an education conference. When she returned to collect her mother's personal effects, Laura found another woman lying in the hospital bed, this time without a daughter by her side, and Laura quietly spent the night with her as well.

After that night, Laura Roslin avoided hospitals and doctor's appointments for six years. Until one morning in the shower, she had felt a strange lump in her breast, and her world began to close in around her. 

Laura Roslin hated hospitals the way children fear the dark; it was beyond intellectual, but a visceral, primal feeling. Therefore, when the Earth doctors finished their tests she had no wish to sit alone in the sterile hospital room. She dressed herself, slipped on her jacket, and quietly stepped next door to where Kara Thrace had just finished with her examination.

She knocked quietly on the door. "Do you mind if I come in, Captain?"

"Of course not, ma'am."

An awkward silence hung in the air for a moment before Roslin noticed a cigar sitting with the pilot's things on the small bedside table.

"Do you smoke?"

"Occasionally."

The President smiled and walked over, picking up the rolled tobacco and smelling it. "I've always loved these things. Not to smoke them, I tried that once in college and I turned three shades of green… but I always liked smelling them."

Kara watched her with some curiosity mixed in her expression. "Not something I pictured in you."

Laura laughed. "I hate those things Doctor Cottle smokes…but I think that is mostly because they're his and remind me of endless medical exams with only death lingering on the horizon." She smiled, looking at the pilot again. "The young always think they are immortal and I think I'd rather have that feeling again. Like how you can climb into a cockpit day after day and face Cylon raiders." 

Laura put the cigar down and Kara began to laugh, "With all due respect, Madam President, you are the one with Cylon bullet holes in your jacket. When they're shooting at me I can shoot back, and I have a ship between them and me. Which of us is the immortal here?"

Laura looked down at her jacket, noticing the two holes near the hem of the jacket for the first time in months. "I suppose you have a point there."

A new voice interrupted them. "It's an occupational hazard with politicians as much as it is among pilots, I'm willing to bet." Abigail Bartlet was standing in the doorway. "Do you ladies mind if I join you?"

"Of course not, Mrs. Bartlet. May I present my military aide and one of our best fighter pilots, Captain Kara Thrace," Laura said in a bit of a motherly tone.

For all her cocky, reckless attitude, for the entire persona that was 'Starbuck', Kara Thrace nearly glowed at the praise and looked slightly embarrassed. Abbey extended her hand to the young woman. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain. And Abbey is fine. I think I prefer it to Mrs. Bartlet. Somewhere I lost the right to be called Doctor."

Laura watched the other woman. "You're a medical doctor?"

"Yes, a surgeon," Abbey confirmed. "My daughter would kill me for this, but do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I overheard some of the doctors talking outside."

"Not at all."

"They are all abuzz that you asked for a full cancer screening…"

Laura smiled, willing to bet 'abuzz' was an understatement. "A little under half a year ago I was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, the day of the attacks, in fact. I've recently gone into remission but I was hoping that your people might have more advanced medical science to confirm it. We have very good doctors in the fleet, but hardly what would have been world class medical facilities."

Abbey raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "What kind of treatment were you undergoing…" she began, and then she seemed to remember that Kara was in the room. "If you don't want to discuss it publicly."

Roslin shook her head. "No, I hid the illness for a long time, but it became rather public. Besides, I trust the good Captain Thrace. I was taking a drug called chamalla, and underwent some… experimental medical treatments."

She said it to the First Lady, but she intended it for Kara's ears. Laura wished she could reach out into the young woman's past and find who had first told her that she wasn't a good enough person in her own right, without the need for the rough and tumble act she put out to the world. The smoking and the drinking and the attitude were a façade; they were things Starbuck did to live up to the illusion of who she was, and hide the truth. The truth was, as Laura was finally beginning to understand what Adama had known all along, Kara was a wounded little girl who had not yet found how to be the mature young woman she could eventually become with a little nurturing.

"So have they decided that we're human?" Starbuck asked.

"Anatomically, I think so. They will want to run some genetic testing to be sure, and that could take weeks… or longer."

"I'm willing to bet that it takes less time." Roslin knew what governments could do when they threw resources at a project.

"You're probably right." Laura and Abby shared a knowing smile.

"You cheat," Toby Ziegler pronounced gravely after regaining his breath. The accusation shot through the night air of the small half basketball court behind the White House. "She's a ringer."

Lee Adama gave the speechwriter a mock-horrified look, glanced at the faces of the other White House staffers, and then back to the grinning blond who had sunk the basket. "Are you questioning the honor of a Colonial Forces officer? Starbuck, have you ever played this game before?"

"No, sir." She retrieved the ball and sank the basket a second time. "Not this game."

"I think I've been conned," Toby grumbled, turning his righteous indignation towards President Bartlet.

The President just grinned back. "Come on Toby, a ball, a basket, did it not occur to you that they might have a similar game? Or does the concept seem so unique to you that it could only evolve on Earth?"

"That's a trick question, sir."

It was, after all. For the last few days, so much of the focus of the President's staff had been on these people…these Colonials…and how similar they were to themselves. It was as if a western democracy had fallen from the sky. Bartlet glanced past Toby to the edge of the court where Laura Roslin had appeared leaning against a large old tree, a shawl wrapped around her in the mild late November air making her look particularly fragile.

"If I'm going to be accused of conspiring with people from other planets, I think I'm going to go do it with one my own age." The President smiled, shaking both Apollo and Starbuck's hands before laying a hand on Toby's shoulder. "Besides, clearly these young people don't need me to kick your ass, and I can still say they were on my team."

"I am being conned."

"You think I don't know how often my own staff gets to work out?"

Toby glanced around to the other staffers who were smiling and watching him. "Why aren't all of you offended?"

"Because I know how much I get to go to the gym too..." CJ smiled. "And his office is next to mine and I have to listen to him yell at me if he's mad. You, on the other hand, are down the hall now and have much less threatening power over me."

Toby turned to challenge Jed again, only to see that he had already walked off the court towards Roslin.

"I have definitely been conned."

CJ passed the ball to Toby. "Come on, sucker, the adults have things to talk about."

To Jed's eyes, Laura Roslin looked paler and weaker the closer he approached. He wondered if it was that she really was more fragile than she had been the day before, or if it was simply that he knew she was not that vital and determined leader he had talked to when they first landed. He wondered a bit if that was how other world leaders viewed him. Sick and tired…

"This is actually mild for Washington in late November," he said to her. "Normally by now we have a dusting of snow on the ground at least. I'm told we'll be getting a big storm in soon though."

She smiled a bit, knowing he probably didn't want to talk about the weather. "Sometimes on the ships it's easy to forget about things like seasonal weather. Climate controlled and regimented. Lately I have been dreaming of snow. Perhaps we will get some soon." She watched the game for a bit. "Pyramid is the name of the game we have like this. I understand that Captain Thrace is quite the player."

Bartlet looked over at her again. "I read the report from our doctors at Bethesda."

"I thought that might be what's on your mind. So you know that we are human, and that I am in remission?" Roslin looked up into his eyes with an enigmatic smile.

"The jury's still out until the genetic tests are done."

She shook her head with a wistful smile. "You know, I think I have started to see my body as an enemy instead of a friend. An unreliable ally who may turn its back on me any moment."

Her words rang inside President Bartlet's own mind, reminding him of his own feelings on those days when the multiple sclerosis robbed him even of the ability to stand on his own feet. "That's a bit more direct than I expected you to be. On our world, politicians don't want to talk about their own health. All the presidents for the last forty years have hated one of our predecessors because he insisted on standing through his inauguration without a jacket to prove he was young and vital. Now all the rest of us have to do the same." He was careful about walking this line, the weight of his own illness heavy in the back of his own mind.

"I have found that I don't have the time to be as evasive about some things as I might have been once. And really I've felt more alive in the last year then I have in my entire life. I was diagnosed the morning the world ended, and I think I might have had more of a head about me that day because I knew I was going to die, Cylon nuke or not. Cancer gave me purpose and strength... If the price is death I won't pretend I will welcome it… or that the possibility doesn't scare the hell out of me, but it hasn't been entirely negative."

Bartlet had come over to share experience and comfort her, but now sat in stunned silence. His own words spilled from him even before he realized. "Eleven years ago I was diagnosed with a degenerative illness called multiple sclerosis. I don't think I could ever see it as an asset. Something to ignore, hide, or avoid if I could. When it came out in the middle of my first term in office the public was very angry with me for not disclosing it."

Roslin looked up into his eyes. "Mr. President, in a democracy, an over-informed public can be just as dangerous as an ill-informed one. Take away the vitals of supplies, food, water, fuel; a population survives on three things, hate, fear, and hope. It is a leader's job to make sure the people the public hate, the things they fear, and the events they hope for are really in their best interests. Otherwise, they are angry and blind sheep, no matter how well informed they are."

The hairs on the back of Jed Bartlet's neck stood on end, and he stood, for perhaps the first time in his life, in stunned silence.

Billy wasn't watching the game, at least not the basketball game. He was never that interested in sports, and he had a nagging feeling something much more important was going on. He wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying, but simply by reading the body language he could tell that the Presidents were relating a bit better than they had the first day they were here.

"To be a fly on that wall... or tree." A black man he hadn't noticed was suddenly standing next to him. "I don't think we've met. I'm Charlie Young. I work for CJ Cregg, the Chief of Staff."

"Billy Keikeya, President Roslin's personal aide."

Charlie smiled. "I used to be President Bartlet's personal aide."

The two of them watched their bosses talking in silence for a moment. "Overworked?"

"Yes. Underpaid?"

"I don't think I've been paid in… forever." Billy smiled.

"Okay, I think I'm buying the drinks after they go to bed."

Billy laughed, and Charlie smiled.

"Good, I was afraid there I might have accidentally started a diplomatic incident. We usually leave that up to Josh Lyman."

Billy smiled again. "I think if my boss ever started a diplomatic incident she would tell me first. Or not." His mind flashing to the days the Fleet spent divided with Roslin on the run. "But either way there would be no accidentally about it."

"How long have you been with her?"

"I was assigned to her office as an intern when she was Secretary of Education, and stayed on after the attacks. I hadn't even met her before we got on the transport to go out to _Galactica_'s decommissioning. Sometimes I think I'm more a puppy dog following her around now then really doing a job, but if she didn't need me she'd tell me."

"I'm sure she needs you. The White House wouldn't function without the assistants, no matter how much our bosses think they could."

"I don't know…she's changed. I watched her turn from my friend, my mentor into something else. A weight settled on her shoulders and she was not even truly human anymore. I wonder sometimes, if we have an election, and someone else takes on her position if she can ever be the person she was before. Somehow...I doubt it. She will always be the president, even if she is in a classroom teaching, or whatever else she could do." The last trailed off. "I don't know what I'd do without her."

… to be continued …


	6. Chapter 6

The night before, after everyone had gone to bed, a cold wind had blown in and brought with it eight inches of new snow, practically shutting down the capital. Bill Adama pressed his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat as the cold wind whistled down the broad avenues of Washington, DC. He paused on the sidewalk outside of Blair House where the temporary Colonial embassy was being set up. Turning in place, he surveyed the landscape and his eyes stopped on the hints of ancient architecture on many of the white government buildings. If these people did not remember the Exodus, they certainly had an ancient memory of something else.

"Echoes of Kobol."

"Excuse me, sir?" asked Lieutenant Gaeta next to him.

"Nothing. We should get out of the cold and stop standing outside in a snow storm like crazy men."

If the city was asleep outside under the new blanket of snow, inside Blair House the President's staff was rushing about as if they hadn't slept in days. Tory Foster almost certainly hadn't. Adama smiled just a bit at seeing Laura Roslin standing alone in the center of chaos, marveling, not for the first time, at the surprising strength of this woman. Had he met her at a party two years ago he would never have seen the sharp mind or the seeming endless reservoirs of inner strength and determination he had so disastrously tripped over a few months before.

He might have seen her intelligence, and he might have even found her attractive, but he doubted that if anyone who had known her before attacks had met her today that they would recognize her at all.

"Ah, Admiral." Roslin smiled upon seeing him, turning on the charm that always made him wonder who the real Laura Roslin was. "I've been inside all day. Would you care to go for a walk with me?"

"Why did I know you'd want to go outside?" he asked, returning her smile with one of his own.

She handed him a small note in her slanted flowing handwriting, _'We are still searching for listening devices.'_

He nodded and handed the note back to her. It was, after all, why he had brought Lieutenant Gaeta with him. "I serve at your pleasure, Madam President."

After Billy slipped on her coat, Adama had an overwhelming urge to offer her his arm. As they stepped outside, two secret service agents, along with two of Roslin's own presidential detail began to follow at a distance. She almost shyly slipped her gloved hand into the crook of his arm.

"It's good to know we're operating on a level of trust with the long lost cousins."

"I would like to trust them not to have bugged the building, but were I in President Bartlet's position, I would have."

"Laura, often I worry about the things you would be willing to do." It was a rare candid moment where he not only spoke his mind but also called her by her first name.

She didn't respond to his comment, but walked next to him in silence for a time. "I do what I think I have to do for the survival of humanity. Our part of humanity," she added quietly.

"At the cost of your own?"

To his surprise, she nodded. "Yes, even at the cost of my own. You can be human enough for both of us." He didn't quite know what to say to that and as they walked past a tall stone obelisk that he had been told was the Washington Monument she leaned into him. "We have to discuss what to tell them about the Cylons."

"That's going to be messy. What exactly do they know now?"

"That our world was destroyed by a genocidal military force called the Cylons. We haven't told them about their origins, or their ability to look human, or their motives."

"Do we even understand their motives?" He arched an eyebrow at her.

"Point."

"From what I've seen of their military capabilities this planet is a sitting duck. If the Cylons jumped into this system, the only defense they would have is _Galactica_. Even though they have a lot of nuclear weapons… without an effective delivery means they are no better than rocks."

"Expensive, radioactive destabilizing, rocks, Admiral. Why would you create weapons that would contaminate your own side through the winds if you were only fighting planetary wars?"

"Because weapons designers are short-sighted and politicians will do what they think they need to do." He looked down at her, as if to put a point on her own comment about being human.

"At some point we should see about acquiring some to replenish our own stockpiles."

"And that brings us back to the Cylons." He covered the hand she had crooked in his arm with his own.

"We could tell them they were created by an alien race bent upon human destruction."

He shook his head at the thought of deceiving the people of what they all hoped would be their new home. "Or we could tell them that we created them and they are bent upon human destruction. I'm not sure which is worse. The truth might be more helpful and we could warn them about the path they are on. I've been having Dee and Lieutenant Gaeta monitor their communications. They are heavily reliant on networked computers and wireless communications."

Laura shook her head, "What a mess. Frakked if we tell them, and frakked if we don't."

"I thought that was what politics was all about, Madam President." When he looked over at her, and beyond her at the red brick fortress and a statute on horseback, he waited for her to laugh. Or not. Pinning down Roslin's sense of humor was only slightly easier than pinning down her motives.

She leaned down and picked up a clump of snow, examining it thoughtfully. "You are very cynical at times, Admiral."

"About politics? Remember my father was a lawyer? I learned not to trust politicians before I learned to walk." He caught her eyes with his own a smirk forming on his lips. "Besides you have a shifty look about you…"

Before he could finish his sentence, the well-packed snowball Laura had been surreptitiously forming impacted against his chest. Her maniacal laughter echoed off the museums around them until a fluffy ball of packed powder hit Roslin. Soon hastily packed missiles were flying in both directions and President and Admiral were both covered in snow. During a lull in the snow fight, Laura managed to get close enough to slip snow down Adama's shirt, and was rewarded with a righteous howl.

"You fight dirty! And you have a mean fast ball."

"Believe it or not I used to play pyramid a million years ago." Laura just smiled. "And years of practice throwing erasers at students."

"You must have been one hell of a teacher."

"Damn straight I was."

Tom Zarek watched out the window as President Roslin and Adama came back from their walk, covered in snow and laughing. A pang of jealousy he knew he had no right to welled up as she brushed a bit of snow from the Admiral's overcoat and said goodbye when he got into a black SUV to speed back to the air base. Adama had only come down to have a discussion with the President and would now be returning to the Fleet. It didn't make sense to any of them to have both the Admiral and the President on the planet for very long.

Zarek had known that he had feelings for Roslin for a very long time. He had to laugh when he thought about it. He was the consummate political animal and in first few weeks after the attacks he had felt certain that he could undermine and replace this amateurish school teacher without much difficulty. Moreover, that humanity would be better for it. A clean sweep of Adar's lot, an end to an unjust society, and a new beginning for humanity without the inequalities of Colonial society.

He had vastly underestimated Laura Roslin, and he knew it soon after his first encounter with her on Colonial Day. Here was this woman with no military experience that enjoyed the support of the military, and who would be coldly logical when she had to while still making most people believe she was sweet and motherly. He would have been her biggest booster were it not for her disturbing messianic tendencies.

"Billy said you wanted to see me, Mr. Zarek?"

He nearly jumped at her voice behind him, realizing that he had been lost in thought for too long. When he turned to face her, he had turned on his charming smile.

"Yes, I was wondering if you had dinner plans tonight, Madam President." He resisted the urge to call her Laura, part of him knew with certainty that she would turn him down if he did.

"Not that I know of."

"President Bartlet's adviser, Leo McGarry, gave me the address of a good steak house in Georgetown. I thought maybe we should take advantage of the opportunity to have a good private meal before all hell breaks loose when they announce our presence to the public."

Her head tilted to the side for a moment. "Are you asking me out on a date, Mr. Zarek?"

"Only if you want it to be that, otherwise it's just a steak dinner." He wanted to catch her eyes, to gauge her reaction, but as always, when it seemed she wanted to hide her thoughts, her glasses shielded them from view. It wasn't until she smiled that he knew he had scored a success.

"I would be honored, Tom."

Kate Harper was surprised to see Laura Roslin walking into the White House Communications bullpen late at night. She had an overcoat on and was wearing one of the same three suits Kate had seen her in before, probably the only three she owned. "Can I help you, Madam President?"

Roslin smiled. "I'm looking for my aide, Billy. Someone told me that two of your staff were taking him out drinking."

Harper smiled. "Josh and Charlie… I suspect when he does come back he'll be pretty hammered."

The alien president winced, and then shook her head. "I'm not sure how much Billy can hold his liquor. That will be … interesting."

"Getting people drunk is always interesting. At least until they throw up, and then it's just messy." The comment came from behind Kate, but she knew it was Abigail Bartlet's voice. At least Roslin was still smiling. "You look like you could use getting plastered yourself, Laura."

Roslin nodded. "It's been a long, weird evening."

"Weird how?" Kate tilted her head to the side.

"Men."

"Oh, now you really need to get plastered. I think I have a couple of bottles of wine hidden upstairs." It was a bit of a joke. The First Lady didn't need to hide liquor—she could just order it from the stewards. Either way, Kate was starting to get slightly alarmed.

This had the makings of a diplomatic incident, or an intelligence coup. "Mind if I join you?"

The first bottle of wine was long gone before Roslin relaxed, and a second gone before she started giggling as she spoke. "So I have one man who can't decide what to do about me… besides chaste but very adorable kisses and throwing me in the brig… but I don't think that had anything to do with liking me… and another who apparently is in puppy love, without me having even noticed."

"That doesn't sound like that much of a problem. Well, the brig thing might be, but you never know," Abbey said as she poured herself another glass of wine. Kate had carefully tried not to get anywhere near as drunk as the other two women were, but she was acting the part. "Especially with how that one looks… Zarek."

"I don't know, ma'am. I saw the Admiral when he arrived at Andrews. I can see where he has his charms."

Roslin smiled wistfully. "Thank you, Commander Harper. The Admiral does have his own unique charm. But so does Tom Zarek…for a terrorist."

"Terrorist?" Kate sat up a little. "Mrs. Bartlet, the wine…" The First Lady stopped pouring just at the rim of the glass, and had to lean over a little to sip from the glass so it wouldn't slop on the floor when she picked it up.

"Zarek is from a colony named Sagittaron, smallest population of the twelve, the least amount of political influence. They probably gained the least when the Colonies united. There were some scandals, large corporations polluting the environment. Zarek and his friends blew up government buildings to get peoples attention. He was in prison for twenty years, and happened to be on his way to a parole hearing when the attacks happened. Some believe him to be a prisoner of conscious." Laura paused. "I, however, am not one of them."

"If he tried to overthrow the government, why is he in yours?" Kate wished now that she had brought a recorder, and that she had had even less to drink than she had.

"He's not in my administration; he's the representative of the Quorum of Twelve here to make sure I behave."

"I bet Congress would have that kind of twisted sense of humor if they were going to send a representative," Kate said.

"Oh, no, Kate, they would have sent Andi Wyatt and she's her own special kind of crazy." Abbey raised an eyebrow and turned back to Roslin. "And to hit on you?"

"Apparently, I remind him of his wife."

"That's never a good way to start off a conversation."

"Yes, well, his dead wife, but you have a point. What do you say when a man you don't particularly like professes a crush on you?"

"Besides throw things at him?" Abbey put in.

"Or toss him out an airlock… those aren't as handy down here."

"Do you toss people out airlocks often?" Kate asked.

Roslin developed a slightly disturbing small smile and giggled again. "Far more often than I care to think about."

The statement hung in the air for a very long time, and mixed with Roslin's drunken giggles, it added to the surreal air of the conversation. Kate Harper wondered if someone had left a window open for the cold chill that went down her spine.

… to be continued …


	7. Chapter 7

Danny Concannon had served in the White House Press Corps for longer than most people thought, first for _Dallas Morning News_, the _New York Times,_ and then the_ Washington Post_; he'd even won a Pulitzer Prize for his work covering the presidency. If there was one thing he learned in all that time, it was news wasn't learned from the podium at an East Room news conference. If something was important enough for the President's staff to call a press conference requiring a meeting space that big, whatever it was, had already leaked out.

Nevertheless, there were always exceptions, and this was one of them. For days, weird things had been going on at the Bartlet White House, but for one of the leakiest administrations in recent memory, all of his sources were steadfastly quiet.

And now there was a news conference with two podiums set up in the most formal setting that the White House could offer. The entire press corps was abuzz with speculation, and he knew one or two reporters had stories already written up about a covert visit to the United States by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Danny didn't waste his time writing stories he didn't think were true.

The room was filled with reporters, most of whom he knew, either personally or by reputation, but a surprising number of them he didn't. That in itself might have focused his attention more had it not been for the blue, red, and white flag the marines were setting up, with some sort of yellowish-marigold symbol on the center.

Danny slipped under the rope and walked over to the flag, holding it out to try to get a better look.

"I bet you were the type that crossed police lines when you were a beat reporter too," the high voice of Annabeth Schott, the Deputy Press Secretary came from behind him.

Danny stood back up straight and smiled as he turned around. "I'll have you know I never covered crime. This isn't a national flag."

"Danny, why must you always cause trouble? I've barely got the President speaking to you again." This time Danny's smile was wide and genuine as he saw CJ Cregg coming up behind Schott.

"It's in my nature. This isn't the flag of any country I've ever heard of." The two women gave him a death look. "Vexillology is a hobby of mine."

"Why does that sound dirty?" Annabeth asked.

He gave them both a disdainful look. "It's the study of flags. This isn't a national flag. Are you sure it's not an alien flag?" He looked up at the very tall CJ and down at the diminutive Schott. "Are you sure you two aren't aliens?"

"Go sit down, Danny, before I have the Secret Service do it for you."

"I love when you talk dirty."

"Sit, Danny." CJ's tone brokered no argument.

They might have argued more, but they got a two-minute warning and that was enough for Danny to decide to go back to his chair without the assistance of the United States Secret Service.

Not long after he was seated, "Hail to the Chief" began to play, the entire Press Corps stood, and the room filled with the flashes of still cameras as President Bartlet walked up to the podiums, along with a middle-aged woman with glasses. The part of Danny's mind that registered things without paying attention to them took note that there wasn't a translator present.

"'Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some have unwittingly entertained angels,' Scripture tells us," President Bartlet began, "From the earliest times man has been an explorer. He has always wanted to know what was over the next hill, in the next valley, across the next sea." As Josiah Bartlet began to speak, something in the pit of Danny's stomach told him this wasn't at all what the others thought, and his joke about Annabeth and CJ might have been closer to the truth than he could ever have dreamed. "From the dawn of science, when men of intellect like Nicolas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei first told us the earth rotated around the sun, and not the other way around, we have wondered what might live among those stars. Be they angels or devils, they have always been presented as alien, different, and even superior to we mere mortals."

Now the rest of the room was beginning to understand where the President was leading them. "Today we know for certain who walked among the stars. They are a people in need, who have fled their own homes in search of this world. The most ancient laws of hospitality say blessed is the man with an open heart, and an open home. For the last few days, we have been in contact with the government of a people who call themselves the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Fifty thousand refuges from planetary disaster and war have been searching for us, for those they believe to be their long lost cousins. Let us live up to that beacon of hope that has led them to our door."

Bartlet looked over at the woman. "May I present Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

All chaos broke loose as a flurry of flashbulbs went off again, this time not merely taking pool photographs, but instead focusing on the woman standing next to Bartlet whom he had just identified as an alien.

"Thank you." She inhaled and began to speak. "My people have traveled a great distance to reach you. Our most holy of texts tells us that many thousands of years ago the thirteen tribes of humanity left the paradise of Kobol to live amongst the stars, twelve of them settling on planets near each other, and the most adventurous traveling farther into the darkness to settle a planet called Earth."

There was a wave of low whispers throughout the room. "We are the surviving few of our civilizations, the lucky, or the unlucky, who have been searching for you, our brothers and sisters, for a very long time. The scrolls tell us that 'all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.' They tell us to live for hope, and it is my hope that you will welcome us, and give us a place to call home again so that we may live without fear, and our children need not worry about being the end of mankind. So say I. So say we all."

And to almost everyone's surprise, interspersed among the press corps there were mumblings from the unfamiliar faces. "So say we all."

Josh Lyman was watching the press conference in his office with his feet up. He shook his head marveling at the alien leader maneuvering through the questions and answer period of the press conference with the ease of someone who was obviously familiar with the forum. "She's good."

"My boss is frakking good." The voice surprised him so much that when he pulled his feet off his desk he tipped his chair backwards and fell onto the ground. The woman in a brown suit, and south Asian by the looks of her, rushed over to help him up. "I didn't mean to shock you."

"No, that's fine…. I'm… frakking?" The new word caught his attention and than slipped away again as he put his hand to the back of his head to see if there was any blood and put his other hand out to her. "I'm Joshua Lyman, Deputy White House Chief of Staff."

"Tory Foster. I'm President Roslin's Political Aide, or Chief of Staff, or Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. Not many professional political operatives survived the nuclear holocaust, so we tend to pull double duty."

"I'll remember that next time there's a nuclear holocaust." Josh intended it as a joke, but he knew almost immediately that it probably wasn't funny to someone who'd actually lived through one. "Can I get you something to drink? And… how did you get a normal name like Foster?"

"I don't know. How did you get a good Picon name like Joshua?"

"Okay, that's just too weird."

She smiled, nodding to the TV. "She's got a gift for the press that I don't think I've seen in anyone before. Kind of makes me ashamed I didn't even know who she was before the attacks besides the Secretary of Education. My excuse is that I was a Federalist and she was from the other party."

"Wow, I'm not sure we could manage bipartisanship even if the world ended…"

She smiled. "You'd be surprised what you can manage when there's nothing left to lose."

He up-righted his chair and sat down again, carefully, "So you work with." He snapped his fingers a few times. "The kid we got drunk… Billy?"

"You got Billy drunk? And she hasn't tried to throw you out an airlock?"

"Ahhh, I'm not sure if there is an airlock in Washington."

She nodded, "Yes, I work with Billy… though he's more about keeping her sane and functioning and it's more my job to keep the Presidency sane and functioning. Billy is a great guy, but a bit in over his head, I think."

She glanced at Roslin on the television again. "But I think we all are."

As per their agreement, the Colonial Fleet waited for the press conference announcement before they jumped into orbit. Kate Harper and Nancy McNally were standing in the White House Situation Room watching the big display screen now showing a diagram of Earth's orbit with only the International Space Station in view currently. Within an instant, they saw the first radar target flash in, just as the Raptors had the week before, and then another, and another, and then a mass of them. What looked like dozens of targets appeared around the planet at once.

McNally let out a low whistle and glanced at Kate. "Welcome to a brave new world."

… to be continued …


	8. Chapter 8

Exhausted, CJ had slipped out of the Oval Office after the rest of the people from the National Security Council. The FBI briefing had been sobering to say the least. There had been five separate plots against the Colonial delegation, and that was only counting the plots the FBI knew about. For the first time in seven years, she quietly thanked God that one of those freak DC snowstorms had hit them, shutting the city down. The weather had insulated them somewhat from the global reaction to the arrival of the Colonial Fleet, and given the Administration breathing room without riots in the streets.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles and Miami, angry that President Bartlet might be considering allowing the refugees from space to enter the country before their own relatives in Asia, Latin America, or Cuba, were receiving a great deal of airtime on CNN. All the cable news networks were featuring military analysts of dubious qualification arguing about how they could defend against the ships in orbit.

Across the globe, the protests had the usual, and not terribly unpredictable, anti-American flavor.  
>What CJ really wanted to know was why there were people dressed like dinosaurs in London protesting in front of Number 10 Downing Street. She supposed there was a cosmic significance to Barney, and she had no doubt that he was the incarnation of evil, but the symbolism seemed oddly misplaced to her.<p>

The crowd she found most disturbing was the one behind the barriers at Blair House, the temporary Colonial Embassy. Even with the freezing temperatures, there were hundreds of people standing vigils: reporters doing live shots, immigration protesters, religious nuts of every flavor, UFO fanatics convinced that Laura Roslin had personally put tracking devices up their noses, and even the merely curious. A career in politics had made the White House Chief of Staff used to crowds, but this one was far too quiet for her own comfort. It was as if they were all waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Kate Harper stayed behind as the majority of the National Security team left the Oval Office. She had never said outright that she needed to speak to the President, but she had long ago found that she could communicate a great many things to Josiah Bartlet without articulating them. It was that kind of working relationship that had guided them both through what the conventional wisdom had always said was impossible, real peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He had called it chasing the that Nobel prize, and perhaps part of their bond was that she was the only person in the room willing to give him permission to do just that. Kate was introspective enough to admit that for all the shadowy things she had done for her country, things that she was proud of and not so proud of, working with the President on the peace talks was the moment that she was glad she would be remembered for. "Let the soldiers be the peacemakers," Admiral Fitzwallace had once told her.

"Sir, I thought I should talk to you about the other night."

"You, Abbey, and President Roslin?"

"Yes, sir."

Bartlet took off his coat and laid it on the back of his chair, then walked around the heavy desk to sit opposite her. "You look concerned, Kate."

"I am, but I wasn't sure I wanted to bring it up in front of everyone. I'm not really sure I have that much of a reason to be concerned." She fidgeted with her hands. There were few people in the world that could make Kate nervous enough to do that, and this thing with the Colonial leader was one of them. "She makes me uneasy, sir."

"There are a lot of people who are uneasy right now, Commander."

"No, I don't mean the Colonials in general, I mean their President in particular. I feel like she is dangerous, and charming, and willing to lie through her teeth to get what she wants… and really the only thing I have to go on is that she made an off hand comment about throwing people out of airlocks."

The President nodded. "You have an advantage over me. I'm not even sure I can articulate what about her has me concerned. She talks about politics in a very Machiavellian way, the uses of power and public opinion." He smiled at Kate. "Maybe it's the fact that she was a school teacher. Teachers always have a certain megalomaniacal streak. Says the son of a school head master." The President gave her one of his 'yes, I know I am being a smart ass' looks.

"The problem is, sir, that I don't know how to interpret her. It seems to me that putting the Colonials in our social context is a mistake…"

"At the moment, we take them at face value, because I can't think of anything else to do either. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean I don't want you to keep your ear to the ground. We need more of the puzzle pieces before we can see the big picture."

**~**~**

CJ paused at one of the dozens of televisions around the West Wing and listened for a moment before poking her head into the Communications Bullpen. She asked of no one in particular, "Is that Colonial pilot really flirting with Wolf Blitzer on CNN?" The question provoked no reaction from half the people and the other half looked up with a chorus of responses that they had MSNBC on in the room. "Well, it's good to know that this White House is well informed."

"And if she was, CJ? Would you really begrudge Blitzer the thrill of having a fling with a cute blond alien?" asked Bonnie.

"They're humans, not aliens, though if she was flirting with him I'll reserve judgment on their humanity despite what the boys down at Bethesda said." There were a couple of chuckles from the room and CJ turned around to run smack into Toby.

"Have you talked to the President this morning?"

"I talk to him every morning. Several times."

"Did he mention the thing at the place?"

"If by that you mean the invitation the First Lady extended to President Roslin to attend Mass with the family, yes, it came up."

"I don't think it's a good idea…"

"I suppose we could arrange for her to go to temple with you, but wouldn't Andi be jealous?"

Just then Josh came striding up, a pile of papers with Donna's scrawling handwriting scribbled all over them in one hand as they turned into the outer office of the President. "I don't like this idea of them going to the Basilica of the National Shrine."

CJ sighed and looked between the two as though to ask if they had conspired to gang up on her. "Any particular reason that I can take to the President before I have to start an interstellar incident?"

"Beside that Mrs. Bartlet's political sense ranks right up there with Idi Amin?" asked Toby.

Someone in the group might have responded except the door to the Oval Office opened at that moment. Jed Bartlet came out with all the fury and amusement of a father having caught one of his children doing something he shouldn't. "I don't believe my wife has his taste for flamboyant military uniforms, among other things. Though she might want to be dictator for life…"

Behind the President, Kate Harper stifled a smile.

"Come on in, children, I'm only twenty minutes behind schedule and you can all explain to me why I shouldn't take a visiting dignitary to see High Mass in the Basilica of the National Shrine."

"Sir, the unease around the country is escalating and it's getting a lot of air play on the cable news networks…" Josh began, stating his case.

"Where is a missing blond haired young woman when you need one?" CJ mumbled. It had been the bane of her existence that the 24-hour news cycle gave a lot of airtime to stories, if they had new information or not, and if they were truly important… or not.

Josh continued, "I don't like the picture that is going to be painted by images of you with aliens…"

"Colonials," provided Toby.

Josh gave Toby a look, and CJ shrugged. "He's on a 'calling things by their proper names' kick. Next thing you know we'll be going to Mumbai in two months instead of Bombay."

"We're not going to Bombay? Where is Mumbai?" Josh suddenly looked confused.

"India, Josh." This was one of the times CJ wondered how Josh had made it through two Ivy League schools.

"At any rate, I'm not thrilled with the picture of the Colonials in front of a cathedral." Toby said bringing them back to the subject at hand.

"Next argument," Bartlet called out, dismissing the concern.

"Is anyone else worried about exposing these people we barely know and don't fully trust to our religious systems?" Josh wondered aloud.

"What are you afraid they might do with the information?" CJ didn't see the validity, if any, in Toby and Josh's objections.

"They could be offended or become hostile if their beliefs clash with ours. Religious warfare has started over sillier things." Toby wasn't yet willing to give up on his argument.

"Certainly religion has been the cause of war before, but I don't think I've ever heard of the Christmas story being the catalyst." The President shook his head.

"The Puritans weren't big fans of Christmas," Will Bailey shot from across the room.

"And people with big shoes and belt buckles on their hats are good examples of rational behavior?" CJ asked.

"Children…" The low warning tone from the President brought the bickering staff back down to a manageable level.

Just then Debbie, the President's Executive Secretary poked her head in. "Sir, the Surgeon General is here to see you."

President Bartlet nodded. "Sit down, people, I think I'm about to get a lesson in genetics. I've always hated biology and I'm going to share the pain."

"I heard that, Mr. President," Surgeon General Millicent Griffith swept into the room, a set of folders under her arm. "If you keep talking like that I'll call Ellie in from NIH and get her to do this."

"Always trying to turn my children against me, Millie," the two exchanged good natured jabs, "I take it those are the genetic test results."

"They are… and Jed, they're damn strange."

"What about this situation isn't?" CJ questioned.

Dr. Griffith looked around the room. "I don't suppose any of you know much about evolutionary biology?"

Kate tilted her head to the side. "I thought it was just a simple matter of seeing if they had human DNA or not?"

"Nothing is quite that simple when you are talking about genetics." The Surgeon General sat down and prepared herself to deliver a genetics lesson to the President and his staff. "There are basically two schools of thought in modern evolutionary theory; either a new species branches away from the parent like a tree, in a gradual change, or they immediately jump away and become completely different in one leap of great change. Something like a tree versus a subway map."

"Millie, you can tell you're from New York when you compare things to subway maps…" the President teased.

Were she not in uniform and they not standing in the middle of the Oval Office the President's comment might have heard him a quick comeback from the Surgeon General, but this was the Oval, and they were discussing a serious matter and she didn't joke in this room when here on national business. "Once two groups from the same species are separated geographically so they are no longer interbreeding, genetic drift will dictate that speciation should take place."

CJ nodded slowly, as if to pretend she was following. "So even if we started out as the same species our genes would be different."

"Should be," the Surgeon General confirmed, "but they aren't. Not only do we share a genetic ancestor with those people… we share most of our genetic stock as well. It is as if they haven't changed at all. Either by punctuated equilibrium or by gradual speciation, given the three thousand year span they describe, we should be different species in the same genius. But with the exception of one anomaly in one of the tests… they seem to be _Homo sapiens_."

"What was the anomaly?" the President asked.

"We're still running more tests on it…"

"Millie…" CJ could tell that the President was picking up on the Surgeon General's deflection.

"President Roslin's blood chemistry doesn't seem to match the other volunteers."

The President looked over at Kate with a raised eyebrow. "The plot thickens."


	9. Chapter 9

Kara Thrace looked herself over in the mirror, brushing imaginary bits of dust and the occasional blonde hair from her uniform. It seemed to her that whoever had made the Colonial Fleet uniforms chose a fabric with a supernatural attraction to shedding hair (something Starbuck had in abundance).

"Stop fidgeting, Starbuck. You look like a cat in a dog show." Lee Adama was standing behind her watching the rare display of nervousness. "You look fine."

"How many dog shows have you been to in your life, Lee?" She glanced over at him to see a shrug. "I bet you like little fluffy dogs with nasty dispositions."

"Well, I like you."

"Touché." She continued to fiddle with her uniform.

"Here, let me," Apollo finally said with a smile as he came over to fix her collar.

"I don't understand why you can't go with her to this thing instead of me."

"You are her military adviser, not me."

"She stopped taking your advice?"

"She stopped asking for it actually." Lee sat down in the chair. "Or I stopped offering it. I'm not really sure which came first."

Starbuck saw the chance to deflect the conversation away from her own nervousness. "You can't hold onto parental figures very long, can you, Lee?"

"She's not my mother."

"Lee, she's everyone's mother, except maybe the Old Man. Hell, some of the pilots even call her 'mom' and the Admiral. 'dad.'"

"Just what I need, a couple dozen new brothers and sisters."

Kara shook her head, but watched him for a long moment. "Are you in love with her Lee?"

The question seemed to surprise him, and he didn't answer for several minutes. "I think I was once, a little. Not really with her, but with the idea of her."

Starbuck raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that like being a little bit dead?"

Apollo shook his head. "Have I ever told you about meeting her for the first time?"

Kara shook her head.

"My Viper was damaged when I destroyed a raider's missile. _Colonial One_ picked up my bird dead in space. Here was this little civilian liner trying to organize a rescue in the middle of a war zone, and at the center was this soft-spoken fragile looking woman, who I thought could break in two with a stiff wind. She was quiet, calm, and more in control of the situation than I ever could have been, but in the moments before we found out she would be President… she looked so small and scared. I liked her because she made me feel like she needed me, and wanted me to be around without making me feel like I was always disappointing her."

Starbuck chuckled a little bit to herself. She knew Lee was referring to his relationship with his father, but that was exactly how Lee handled his own personal relationships as well.

"So what happened?"

"She convinced my father to murder Admiral Cain."

They both knew what he was referring to; after all, Kara was to have been her assassin. "Lee, she couldn't have convinced your father of the need for that any more than she could have convinced you to pull a gun on Colonel Tigh. I'm hardly the person to lecture anyone about personal responsibility, but you and your father are strong enough men not to need to scapegoat someone else for the actions you disapprove of."

Lee smiled a little. "I think if my father and I didn't disapprove of each other, we wouldn't know how to relate at all."

"You know that's unhealthy?"

"And you're going to lecture me now on healthy interpersonal relationships?" Apollo asked disbelievingly.

"Just because I'm messed up doesn't mean I can't stand in judgment of others." She turned around and fidgeted again with her uniform."

"Why am I going again?"

"She specifically asked for you. You'll have to ask her what her reasoning was."

"Like that would help," she shot back over her shoulder at Lee, but immediately shut up upon seeing who was standing behind him.

"You could always try asking, Captain. I might surprise you. I sometimes even tell the truth." Laura Roslin came further into the room, and Kara wondered how long she had been listening in on the conversation. "I would really like to take Admiral Adama. He hasn't met President Bartlet yet and from what I have been told the place we are going to is a beautiful building." She nodded to Apollo. "Your father and I have talked about architecture a few times…"

Both young offices glanced at each other. The range of things the Admiral and the President seemed willing to talk to each other about was amusing, especially when taken into account with what they were not willing to speak to each other about.

"However, the Admiral and I have decided to limit how much information we give these people for now. Besides," Laura inhaled, "I'm not sure how comfortable he is with religion."

Lee smiled, but the smile hid conflicted emotions. He was always seemed conflicted and sometimes Starbuck had an overwhelming urge to slap him silly—not that Laura Roslin didn't inspire complex feelings in her as well. The butterflies in her stomach every time she was in the President's presence made her want to slap herself silly. Unfortunately, beyond the slapstick appeal, that probably wouldn't help. "Ma'am, I'm not good at this sort of thing."

"Really, Madam President, she's not," Apollo confirmed, though the smirk made it clear he was slightly more amused than truly concerned, undoubtedly glad that it was someone else in the presidential crosshairs.

"You don't have to agree so quickly," Kara teased.

"When you're right, you're right. It doesn't happen often."

Roslin seemed to be enjoying the pilots' banter, and Kara wondered if this was the first real smile she had seen from the older woman. Kara wondered if that was a real smile now. _She should do it more often; it makes her look twenty years younger_. The thought seemed both random and oddly out of place. Half the time she disliked Roslin and the other half she desperately wanted her approval. It wasn't terribly different to her relationship with her mother. There were also times when it was impossible for her to identify what she was feeling about the President. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know either.

"So why not Lee?" Kara asked, both wanting and not wanting to know Roslin's answer.

"It's a religious service and you're probably the closest thing to an expert on alien religion that I've got."

_If one counted a philosophical conversation over torture as enough to qualify one as an expert…there is definitely something else going on_. "Cylon religion." Starbuck corrected, and met Roslin's eyes.

"Besides, Captain Apollo seems to distract women." The President smirked at Lee.

"He's done that since he was a little boy, I think."

"You mean he isn't still a little boy?"

"Ladies, I am still here you know."

Laura looked innocent and Starbuck gave him a grin.

"The two of you scare me."

CJ caught up with Donna Moss as she was carrying a large stack of files between offices in the West Wing. "Donna, I need to borrow you for a moment."

"A moment moment, or a half the morning moment."

"More than one, less than the other."

The blonde assistant nodded and fell into step with CJ, though she had to jog a little to keep up with the taller woman's strides. "I need you to handle some shopping for President Roslin. There's going to be a state dinner when the Security Council ambassadors arrive for talks with the Colonial delegation. I need you to go over to Blair House and find out if they have appropriate clothing."

"Isn't that the job of the Office of Protocol?"

"Not exactly, and I rather doubt that President Roslin's people were carrying ball gowns when they fled their world." Donna nodded again, as if to say she heard CJ, "It would look rather silly of us to be decked out in Vera Wang while she's trying to make her limited wardrobe stretch even more."

"I've noticed she's wearing the same suits over and over. Like the one with moth holes."

"I think those are actually bullet holes."

"Well, it's a good thing she didn't escape wearing a ball gown. The dark suit hides the holes better." It was a very Donnatella Moss comment.

"Donna, have I ever mentioned you have an odd way of looking at the world?"

"Seems like a good quality these days…" Donna grinned.

Towards the middle of the Mass, President Roslin had gotten up quickly and moved towards the side aisle of the massive sanctuary and back, asking one of the ushers a question. About half the eyes in the Basilica of the National Shrine watched her walk, followed closely behind by someone from the Bartlet family.

When Ellie Bartlet entered the bathroom, she heard the sounds of decidedly unpleasant retching. "Ma'am? Ma'am, I'm a doctor, are you feeling all right?" She leaned against the bathroom stall down from the one Laura was in. When there wasn't an answer for a moment. "Ma'am, this is Ellie Bartlet. We met briefly outside. I'm one of the President's daughters."

"I'm fine, Dr. Bartlet. Just a bit of an upset stomach." The toilet flushed and she came out quietly, fixing her jacket and trying to look more dignified than she probably felt right now. Still, Ellie managed a diplomatic smile honed in her time in medical school.

"I'm glad. I was a little concerned you might have been upset about some of the imagery. Without the context, a nearly naked, bloody, emaciated corpse nailed to a cross would probably seem disturbing. Your escort seems a bit tense…"

Roslin shook her head. "It's a little eccentric, but the Protocol Office did brief us beforehand. I'm sure if you sat through a religious service of ours there might be strange elements as well. I'm afraid this was entirely my fault. I forgot to take my medication this morning, and the body demands what it demands." She smiled a little more self deprecatingly as she began washing her hands.

Ellie came over and leaned against the sink. "Is this the disease or the treatments that cause the nausea?" Roslin looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. Ellie had the grace to blush a bit as she explained. "I'm a cancer specialist, ma'am. My father asked me to come because he thought I might understand better."

Laura took a bottle of pills out her pocket and set them on the counter as she was cleaning herself up. "It's the medication that causes the nausea. I'm in remission but the cancer came on so rapidly the first time that my doctor wants to try and head it off before it gets a foothold in my body again."

Ellie picked up the pill bottle looking at it absently, and opened it, examining some of the pills before reaching for a small paper cup to get water for Roslin. "How much sleep do you get, Madam President?"

Roslin smiled at her again. "If you're going to ask me personal questions, Doctor, you might as well call me Laura."

Ellie blushed again. "I'm sorry, was that over the line? Sometimes I forget to slip out of doctor mode."

"No, you're fine. I don't get enough sleep, or so my doctors and aides tell me. I'm not sure I can afford to get more though. All my problems began at the end of the world."

"Do you mind if I talk to the people at Bethesda about your condition?"

"Doctor, I'm hardly in a position to turn down help. None of us are."

"Did you see the look on the Captain's face in there?" CJ asked as she leaned against one of the motorcade cars outside. Around were a gaggle of people from the White House Staff, lapsed Catholics, Secret Service Agents, and Kate Harper just getting off her cell phone. "It could just be that her breakfast didn't agree with her, but she seemed like she didn't like what she was seeing."

"If she's a carrier pilot I doubt that's the case. Probably an iron stomach," Kate added.

"I thought the food on ships was supposed to be the greatest in the military, or so the army tells me."

"They lie," the naval officer teased, "I heard on the Secret Service radio that the President disappeared into the ladies' room for twenty minutes."

"I do hope you mean Roslin and not Bartlet."

"She was sick." Both CJ and Kate turned to see Eleanor Bartlet walking down the steps. "She was sick and went to the bathroom to do so discreetly. She and I spoke a bit about her cancer treatments."

Kate missed what Ellie was trying to tell them, but CJ had known her longer and noticed it immediately. "There's something else, isn't there?"

Ellie paused and held out her hand to Kate. "I stole some of her medication as we were talking." She looked a little sheepish.

Kate immediately took out a small envelope, slid the pills out of Ellie's hand, and into it for safekeeping. "That was smart thinking."

CJ wasn't sure if she wanted to scold Ellie for having done it, or Kate for immediately thinking it was a good idea. "You stole medication from a cancer patient? Your mother is going to have a fit."

"I wasn't planning on telling her."

"Neither was I." CJ smiled and turned to Kate. "Commander, how fast can we have those pills analyzed?"

"Well, I'm sure Ellie can tell you that medical research on them might take years, but I think we can find out a few of the properties in a few days with luck."

"Do it."

… to be continued …


	10. Chapter 10

CJ wondered vaguely when she had stepped into a British farce as she surveyed the situation room. Half the people not wearing a uniform were dressed in formal wear for the State dinner that was due to start within the hour. Yet they were all standing around staring at satellite photos. A Vera Wang gown seemed a tad over dressed for an international (or she supposed an interplanetary) crisis.

"An angry mob stormed a radio telescope in Indonesia run by Cornell University at 0900 local time. Two astronomers and five graduate students were dragged from the building and killed," Nancy McNally explained.

"Why does Cornell run an observatory in Indonesia anyway? Don't they have one in Puerto Rico?"

"They do, this one was built four years ago with a private SETI grant to survey stars in the southern hemisphere. They operate with the support of the Indonesian government, but the local clerics are convinced that the dish is a CIA operation."

"Were any Americans involved?" There was a time when CJ wondered the nationalities of the victims always mattered so much. That was before she was responsible, directly or indirectly, for those lives.

"Two, one of the astronomers and one of the graduate students. Most of the rest were Dutch," one of the military aides answered.

"This is the third attack on a telescope or scientific observatory in the past week, all in Southern Asia. The CIA believes that radical Islamic schools are inciting the riots. The crowds seem to be made up of mostly young men shouting a mix of anti-American slogans."

CJ shook her head. "Wonderful."

"State is issuing a travel warning to American students in the region and some of the major American Universities are beginning to organize evacuations of their people."

"Let me know immediately if there is another incident." CJ looked at her watch. "I need to get back to the well ordered chaos upstairs. The Colonial delegation will be arriving in half an hour."

After McNally nodded, the White House Chief of Staff slipped out of the Situation Room, and walked back towards her office still a little lost in thought. CJ stopped when she saw Danny Concannon lurking in the nearly empty Communications Bullpen.

"Are you incapable of staying in designated areas? And why doesn't the Secret Service stop you?"

"They like me more than you?" Danny flirted back.

"The Secret Service doesn't like anyone. Toby is briefing, shouldn't you be in there asking inane and yet strangely insightful questions?"

"Amusing as it is to listen to Toby recite the menu details and what kind of shoes the First Lady will be wearing, I had a question that I thought you might have better information about."

CJ began to walk. "I have better information about a lot of things. That doesn't mean I'll give it to you."

"When has that stopped me before?" He didn't wait for her to answer his question. "I have sources telling me that there have been widespread attacks on scientific research facilities in Indonesia and they might be related to the Colonial's arrival."

"I wouldn't characterize them as widespread. A few isolated incidents to this point."

"I have sources that say it has a religious motivation. That local Madrasas and radical clerics have declared that the Colonials are demons who have taken on human form to take over the world."

"I'm more inclined to trust Bethesda Naval Hospital. I think the key part of that sentence is radical." She looked back at the bank of clocks as they walked past. "Go back to the press area Danny, I have to go meet with the demons for a lovely evening of dinner and dancing."

CJ glanced back at Danny when the reporter stopped moving, instead just watching her walk. He smiled at her. "You look good, CJ. Tell Beelzebub hello for me."

She smiled and shook her head, walking back towards her office.

Opening the hallway door, she began speaking, "Margaret I need…" CJ stopped dead in her tracks and stared with a mix of horror and disbelief at a shirtless Tom Zarek standing in the middle of her office. He smiled at her and looked slightly embarrassed but didn't say anything. The Chief of Staff held up a finger. "I'm sorry, excuse me."

Closing the door quietly she turned. "Margaret…!"

Within a moment, her quirky red headed assistant met her at the door. "Don't go into your office…"

"About a minute too late. Why is there a half-naked alien in my office?"

"I didn't think we were calling them aliens…"

CJ's voice picked up a bit in speed, "I'm sure we can still agree that he is half-naked though?"

Margaret nodded. "Donna took his shirt and jacket and is trying to find him some clothes."

"Donna mugged a Colonial dignitary?"

"Not exactly."

"Explain, please."

Margaret inhaled, never a good sign. "Apparently someone in the crowd outside Blair House threw a balloon at President Roslin as their party was leaving to cross the street. The Secret Service arrested him. What does one get charged with for throwing paint filled water balloons?"

"Paint filled?" CJ asked exasperated.

"Red paint, yes. Apparently Mr. Zarek threw himself in front of her and his tux was ruined."

"And you two decided to stick him in my office? Why not stick him in the Oval?"

"Well, there are so many windows and doors…" Margaret was never good with sarcasm.

CJ waved her hands. "Okay, stop."

Just than Donna came running in at a full tilt, not an easy feat given that she was wearing a stunning pink off the shoulder gown with a low back and what had to be four-inch heels. Sliding to a stop, a garment bag in her hand, she said, "CJ, don't go into your office."

Margaret shook her head at her, as if to say it was too late.

"Oh." Donna smiled, and slipped into CJ's office without another word.

President Bartlet was standing at the top of the stairs while Abbey fixed his tie when he saw another group approaching. Laura Roslin had gone shopping with Donna Moss that afternoon along with half the Diplomatic Security Bureau of the State Department, and their efforts had gained them a dark blue gown with a bit of lace embroidery. She had come in on the arm of a distinguished-looking gentleman in a gray military uniform.

"They look like a cute couple," Abbey commented before they were in earshot. "I wonder if they are together."

"Oh, stop that, Abbey! You have an entire planet of people to match make for before you leave orbit. Besides, it would be like me dating General Alexander."

"I think you'd look cute together too."

He chuckled, and reached out to offer his hand. "It's good to see you again, President Roslin. I see shopping agreed with you."

"It certainly did," her escort put in.

She just smiled, and nodded to him. "President Bartlet, may I present Admiral William Adama of the Colonial Fleet."

The other man smiled and shook his hand firmly. "An honor, Admiral."

"The honor is mine." Abbey caught the other woman's eye as the men exchanged pleasantries. The Admiral certainly did give Tom Zarek a run for his money in the charms department.

Jed waved his hand. "We have to do this thing for the cameras, it shouldn't take too long, and than we can get onto the food and dancing."

Roslin nodded. "I have gone to a few of these sorts of events before. As long as there isn't a need for a food taster it will be fun."

"I believe we keep the food tasters in the kitchen."

"Well, out of sight, out of mind."

The four of them started down the stairs to the strains of "Hail to the Chief" _"_. When they got to the foot of the stairs a Marine sergeant bellowed, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Bartlet with the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, and her escort!"

The Admiral leaned into President Roslin just a bit, Jed could hear him say, "I don't think I've ever been described quiet like that before."

She laughed, and the Marine Band began to play the strains of the music that the Colonial delegation had given them with a crash of cymbals and trumpets.

After dinner and before the dancing began was the time when toasts were made, carefully worded, mostly dreadfully boring. Never spontaneous tributes and threats coached in flowery protocol. Earlier in the evening Roslin had pulled Starbuck aside and asked her to be the one to give the Colonies' toast to their hosts. Now Kara was standing holding up her glass and trying to dismiss the nervous laughter that wanted to well up. A room full of diplomats was not exactly the setting that Kara Thrace did most of her drinking.

"The Lords of Kobol look down upon us and upon our meetings today and in the coming weeks. May Athena, goddess of war, wisdom, and civilization, guide us to peace. May Apollo, god of light bring us messages of understanding. May Hera, mother of gods and sister of the Lord of Lords Zeus remind us that we are all humans, and settle our differences like a large and far-flung family. So say we all!"

Among the Colonials in the room they each muttered, "So say we all," as did a few of the people among the Bartlet Administration, but from his seat in the corner Toby Ziegler was watching something else. He was watching the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority leader shift uncomfortably.

"That's not going to play well on Fox News…" he said quietly

Two hours into the party, Laura Roslin had danced not once but twice with an exceedingly charming but very drunk ambassador, and was going to get herself a glass of wine when she saw someone coming up her peripheral vision with two glasses of wine.

"Have I told you that you look amazing tonight, Laura?"

She smiled, but it was her practiced smile. "Not recently Tom, but thank you." She graciously took the wine from him. "You are looking better yourself."

He looked down at the replacement tuxedo. "I look better in red than you do."

That brought a real chuckle from her.

"Would you mind dancing?"

"With you?"

"I don't mean with Adama."

She shook her head but set down her wine glass on a passing waiter's tray and took the former terrorist's offered hand. "I don't suppose it would hurt too much."

"I'll have you know the last woman's toes I stepped on was my thirteen year old sister." She laughed again, and they danced together slowly.

At a table across the room, William Adama frowned.

... to be continued ...


	11. Chapter 11

The first round of negotiations for Colonial settlement and relief aid had served only to highlight the complexity of the situation. CJ had not been a big part of the Middle East peace talks earlier in the year at Camp David, but she imagined those could not have been half as bad as these were going to be.

As a pure refugee problem, the Colonials were relatively small in scale. There were tens of millions of displaced persons around the world. That said, refugee problems—even small ones—were rarely simple. The Palestinians, as an example, had fled their homes in 1948 after the founding of Israel. Almost sixty years later, the Palestinians still found themselves living in poverty-ridden camps, or living as second-class citizens in neighboring countries.

CJ stepped out into the cold, but fresh, winter air next to Charlie Young. "Do you think I can bum a cigarette from the President?"

"Mrs. Bartlet confiscated his latest pack this morning. I think he's trying to bum one from his Secret Service detail."

"He's trying to get a cigarette from a bunch of people who run alongside cars for a living?"

"I didn't say he was succeeding, just that he was trying. I didn't know you smoked." Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"Not since college I don't, but I could really use one today."

"That bad?"

"Worse. The Colonials want to settle as a group and I don't blame them. They could probably fit inside a small city and be an independent or semi-independent nation state like Hong Kong or Singapore."

"That sounds like a solution."

"The problem is most countries aren't too keen on the idea of dropping a sovereign nation on their doorstep, or giving up any territory."

"I would have thought it would be easy to find a place for them in exchange for their technology."

CJ shook her head. "There have been a few countries that have offered land in exchange for exclusive access to their technology, but no one else wants any one country to have exclusive access. Not to mention that the countries that have stepped up with generous land offers aren't exactly places I'd like to send my worst enemy to live."

"Like where?"

"Well, for an isolationist xenophobic country, North Korea has been acting very friendly."

Charlie winced.

CJ nodded. "There are other concerns as well. NASA's Office of Planetary Protection…"

"NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection?"

"It's nowhere near as cool as it sounds. Most of the time they make sure spacecraft are really really clean so they don't contaminate other worlds."

"So they protect other planets and not this one."

"Well, they protect this one too, but others more so."

"Fun," Charlie commented.

"Anyway, the Office of Planetary Protection has ganged up with the CDC and USAMRIID…"

"USAMRIID?" Charlie was normally good with government acronyms but lately there had been a lot that were new to him.

"The US Army Medical Research Institute into Infectious Diseases."

"Now they sound like the bad guys in a bad science fiction movie."

"I'll make sure I tell them you said that, maybe they can give you Ebola," CJ quipped.

"A bunch of microbiologists and virologists? Sounds like a gang I don't want to tangle with." Being from one of the worst sections of south DC, Charlie knew a great deal about street gangs.

"The army has tanks."

"Point." 

"Anyway, OPP, CDC, and USAMRIID are all pretty pissed that we let the Colonial delegation land without putting them in quarantine. It seems that they're concerned that the ships in orbit are breeding grounds for disease, especially if they were never intended to hold as many people as they have been."

"So they want us to just leave them up there?"

"Essentially. The requests by the Colonials haven't exactly made people feel much better. Along with food and medicine, they've asked for a couple hundred nuclear warheads."

Charlie whistled low. "The essentials of life."

"Smiley – the North Korean ambassador – wants to give the warheads to them…in exchange for some space ships."

"Let me go find you that cigarette…" 

Starbuck walked past the row of US Air Force Security police, saluted the Colonial Marines standing guard and into the area of Andrews Air Force Base that they had taken to calling 'Little Caprica.' It wasn't much, a hanger and a flight line that had four raptors parked out front. The one inside was still under repair after Racetrack's not so gentle coming to earth. Chief Tyrol had been trying to repair the crashed bird for days, basically with bubble gum and shoelaces. The Air Force had given them access to their tools, but as the Chief had so blatantly pointed out, language and biology might be universal… but screwdrivers were not.

Kara watched him and Cally work from a distance for a bit before walking closer. "Still cursing out the Raptor?"

"I'm not cursing the Raptor, Captain. I'm cursing the someone who decided he should take apart a ship he didn't know how to put back together." Tyrol threw down a shop rag in disgust. "It's going to take me at least a week to get her back up and flying."

"I think you have all the time in the world for this, Chief. Things are going slow."

He looked over at the pilot with a raised eyebrow. Presidential negotiations were way over his pay grade. "Something wrong, sir?"

Kara looked over her shoulder, making sure there wasn't anyone else in earshot. "Did… did Sharon ever talk to you about Cylon religion?" It was an odd question, she knew.

The Chief shifted uncomfortably at the mention of Sharon, his one-time lover turned Cylon sleeper agent. "We never really talked about that sort of thing." He smiled a little, picked up a tool, and went to work on the engine again. "We didn't do a lot of talking to be honest."

Galen Tyrol was confused and trying to stay focused. He had had trouble accepting the fact that he had fallen in love with a Cylon, and even Starbuck would normally have been sensitive enough not to bring her up. "It's important, Chief."

He cleaned the seven-prong screwdriver with his rag, lost in thought. "Sometimes, I guess. Why?"

Starbuck undid the top button of her blues and leaned against the crashed Raptor. "The President had me go to this religious service with her, with the Earth leader she's been dealing with. They're monotheists."

Tyrol, the son of a priest, nodded. Monotheism wasn't widespread in their society, but it wasn't unheard of. There were places in the Colonies where one of the gods of Kobol was worshipped solely above all others. "And?"

"And they sounded a lot like the Cylon I interrogated six months ago. God is love, He has a plan for us all, and humanity is created in His image…"

"No frakking?"

She nodded and folded her arms. She was uncharacteristically silent. "Do you think we'd know if we had landed on the Cylon homeworld?"

**~**~**

Tom Zarek watched Laura Roslin from across the ornately decorated mural room. The President was staring at the detail in one of the paintings, leaving him only the back of her head and shoulders to read for body language. They had both sat through the marathon-long meeting with a growing feeling that the governments on Earth were perfectly willing to use them as a game piece in their own politics.

"This could go on forever, while the conditions in the Fleet just get worse." After all, Tom was an expert on civil unrest, and he knew better than most what could lead to violence.

"I think we need to invite a group of them up to the Fleet so they can see conditions for themselves," Roslin said without ever turning around, "give them a tour of some of the ships, a demonstration of the _Galactica_'s capabilities…"

"That may scare them. I'm no military man, but from what Lee Adama has told me they don't appear to have any significant space weapons capability." Roslin didn't say anything in response to that, and Zarek moved closer to her, understanding dawning. "That's your intention."

Laura turned around and on one of those rare occasions, he could see her eyes behind the glasses, and they sent a shiver down his back. "A demonstration of our desperation might push the settlement talks along a bit, yes. And if it doesn't, well, then we have hostages."

He stared at her for a long time, before breaking out into a smile. "You never cease to amaze me." Admiration was one way to describe what he felt for this woman, both for her intelligence, and for just how absolutely ruthless she could be. "This could backfire on us."

"Are you asking to go back up to the Fleet, Mr. Zarek?" Her question almost a dare.

"I think I'd rather stay with you, Laura. I have a feeling you'd find a path through the underworld if you had to."

**~**~**

"I'm not sure we can say no to the offer," the Assistant Secretary of State said from across long dark wood the table. "As long as there are those at the negotiation table arguing a medical reason to deny the Colonials landing rights, and as long as the Colonials are arguing dire need, international law obligates us to send a medical evaluation team."

Jed Bartlet had always hated the Situation Room. It was a cold tomb of a room in the basement of the White House, and he never was called here for good news. He had also never quite gotten over the feeling that as soon as he left the room the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to laugh at him. "International law covers space aliens?"

"It doesn't foresee aliens exactly, sir. There are however, requirements when it comes to obligations under refugee treaties and genocide conventions," the man from State confirmed.

Kate Harper broke in from down the table. "We aren't sure that we want to turn them down, Mr. President. At the moment we have to rely on the Colonials for information about their capabilities. It might do us well to get someone onboard those ships to look around."

"A spy?" Bartlet asked with a raised eyebrow.

"More like a liaison. There are military liaisons in embassies around the world and part of their jobs is to evaluate and report on the military capabilities of those countries. It's more a 19th or early 20th Century means of intelligence gathering, but still entirely valid."

"So along with this medical mission that Roslin has requested, we just stick a military officer in the batch? Don't you think they'll notice it?"

CJ spoke for the first time, "I wouldn't be surprised if they expected it, sir. If we made it a little broader than a medical mission it might stick out less. A group of doctors from the CDC, NIH, and the World Health Organization so that the rest of the world doesn't get in a tizzy…"

"And Commander Harper," the President added looking down the table at Kate. "It's your idea, and you have the kind of experience for the job.

A mixture of surprise and shock crossed her face for a moment before she nodded like a good sailor. "Aye-aye, sir."

The President looked around the table again. "So we pile these people into a space shuttle, or what?"

CJ shook her head. "No, Sir, NASA informs me that the orbiters don't have any means of landing on the Colonial vessels, nor the capacity to carry that many people." She turned her head next to the slightly nervous looking man sitting next to her. "There are apparently safety concerns about the shuttle fleet."

"New ones?" The President shot an incredulous look across the table at his advisors.

The man from the space agency shook his head. "No, sir, space flight carries an inherent danger and we are simply not prepared to advise a rushed launch at this time."

Before they got bogged down too much in the safety, or not, of the US space shuttle program, CJ spoke again, "The Colonials are offering to ferry our people up in their Raptors. The general consensus is that we should probably leave the space flight to those who do it on a more regular basis."

"How would our people return to Earth should there be a problem?"

"They couldn't." CJ paused a beat to let the point sink in. "We would have to rely on the good graces of the Colonials."

... to be continued ...


	12. Chapter 12

Laura Roslin was a schoolteacher. To CJ, that seemed like the first line of the woman's political biography. Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, never mind that he was also a nuclear engineer. That part of his life didn't have the broad appeal that red clay and poverty did. CJ had repeated Josiah Bartlet's political biography enough to recognize the carefully crafted simplicities of others' carefully crafted tales. Josiah Bartlet was a New England economics professor, never mind that he was also a life long politician.

Laura Roslin was a schoolteacher and Jed Bartlet was an economics professor. These were sound bites used to evoke sympathy and confidence in the public. These were unspoken lies wrapped in sugarcoated and oft-repeated truths. Jed Bartlet hadn't been an economics professor in decades. He was well out of academia when he was awarded his Nobel Prize, years after the work that had earned him the honor was published. That fact hadn't stopped the campaign from using those credentials earned in his twenties to support his bid for the presidency in his sixties. It was all part of the fine art of influencing public perception and opinion. CJ Cregg was an expert on public opinion, and she could recognize the work of another master a mile away.

Laura Roslin was a schoolteacher. That evoked images of underpaid, overworked, passionate, and innocent people devoted to the care and education of children. During a recess in the settlement talks, Roslin had gone to visit a Washington, DC middle school, taking most of the White House Press Corps with her. "I wonder if that might shame Congress into giving the district school's more money," the Chief of Staff mumbled allowed, not really thinking it was going to happen. If the highest murder rate in the country just a mile from the nation's capitol couldn't shame the lawmakers into action, nothing would, even a display of poverty and inequality to alien visitors.

CNN was playing a video feed of the Colonial President looking very much like the non-threatening, nurturing schoolteacher surrounded by dozens of poor and minority children. The stunt was well played. The image artfully countered all the speculation by media military analysts about the power of the weapons at her command. She was fooling the world.

Laura Roslin was a natural with the press, and CJ Cregg was very aware of just how dangerous that could be for everyone involved. It all reminded her of the open mic 'slip up' by President Bartlet before the last election. Yep, Roslin was a master if CJ had ever seen one. Her rumination was interrupted by the entry of her assistant Margaret. The normally high-strung woman looked abnormally worried. "When the President says he doesn't want to pull strings to help his daughters' careers, does he mean that, or does he just say that because they would hit him if he didn't?"

"I think he generally means it, but the threat of violence on their part probably helps. Truthfully, though, I think Liz would be more willing to hit him than Ellie. Why?"

Margaret fiddled with a piece of paper in her hands. "Because I was wondering if he would…you know, do something that might hurt their career but be safer and you know…"

"Margaret, what is the piece of paper?"

She reluctantly handed it over to her. "NIH and the CDC sent over the list of twenty doctors they want to send up…" She pointed vaguely at the ceiling. "You know, up there."

CJ instinctively knew what she was looking for as she scanned the page, but continued to talk to Margaret. "Up there, as in the roof?"

"No, you know… up there." Margaret watched her reading for a moment. "Second page, a third of the way down."

And there it was. Eleanor Bartlet. NIH had put the President's middle daughter on the list of people they wanted to send into space.

Jed Bartlet paced the small kitchen in the White House Residence while Abbey read over the NIH list. "Allen Bennett is brilliant. I saw him speak about the 1918 Flu Pandemic once. His specialty was the spread and transport of the disease on troop ships going to and returning from the Western Front. He's a smart choice."

Abbey was speaking in the slightly detached manner that unnerved her husband to no end. She had used that same voice fifteen years before when telling him that she had been accidentally stuck with an HIV-infected needle. Three months of anti-retroviral drugs later when she had finally been cleared, only then, she was able to cry about the whole thing while cradled in her husband's arms. Jed hated that voice; it meant her pain and tears of worry would just erupt later and with a blinding intensity. "I see you are blissfully ignoring Ellie's name on that list," the President commented.

"I'm not ignoring it, Jed. I'm choosing not to comment."

"Choosing not to comment? That's not like you, Abigail."

"She's a doctor, Jed." He saw in her eyes that her motherly pride in her daughter the doctor was doing battle with her motherly need to keep her child out of harm's way. "She wouldn't be on that list if she wasn't needed. That's part of the job. You go where you are needed."

Samuel Mudd set Booth's leg. That had been his wife's argument in a long ago conversation the President was now reminded of. It didn't matter to her that Mudd was hanged for setting the leg, that's what doctors did. "Even if it means sending her into space? You talked about how many diseases could be bouncing around those ships. Refugees with few doctors, little medicine and limited water supplies trapped in tin cans…"

"She's a doctor, Jed. She should go where she is needed. If that means into space or into a war zone I would worry about her, but I wouldn't stop her. And neither should you." The moral imperative implied in the First Lady's voice was absolute, and not for the first time her husband marveled at how strong this wonderful woman was.

"Have I ever told you how sexy you are when you play doctor?" Jed trapped his wife against the kitchen counter.

"Not recently enough." She twined her arms around his neck.

Donna flipped through the channels on one of the televisions in the Communications Bullpen. Josh had promised to take her out to dinner, but dinner had long since passed and she was still in the West Wing waiting for him. She couldn't find anything she really wanted to watch either. Suddenly Donna was wondering if she had offended some higher being when she saw a graphic of Laura Roslin backed by flames underlined with the words "Pagan Invasion."

The Reverend Pat Butler, darling of the radical right and perennial presidential candidate, was speaking on his television program. "The Antichrist has landed among us in the form of this woman…"

Donna shook her head in disbelief, "He did not just call her the Antichrist…"

"The Bible tells us that she will walk among us seducing the masses with honeyed words and a charming message to disarm the world. Christians must not be fooled by her or her minions, or they will not be saved and will suffer when her pagan army comes down from the heavens to oppress the Earth and murder thousands."

She could sense Josh coming up behind her. "Did he just call her the…"

"Yeah, that's what he called her."

"For real?"

"I don't think he kids about that sort of thing."

"Butler called her what?" the President asked incredulously of CJ and Leo McGarry as they stood in the Oval Office.

"The Antichrist, sir," CJ confirmed. She checked her notes. "He also said that the Colonials were using the United Nations to undermine US national sovereignty."

Leo smiled. "It always amazes me that the loonies on the right think the UN is really that competent."

"Butler may be crazy, but there are people who take him seriously," CJ cautioned.

"Didn't he call for the assassination of the President of Chile a few months ago?" Leo inquired.

She nodded.

"Are we sure people take him seriously?" the President asked a bit disbelievingly.

"He has a following."

The President nodded, and CJ and Leo started to leave. "Hang back, Leo, I need to talk to you."

The former White House Chief of Staff nodded, and they both sat down across the small coffee table from each other. "The last time I asked an old friend to do this kind of favor for me, it turned out very badly." It had cost Admiral Percy Fitzwallace his life on a mission to the Palestinian Occupied Territories right after his retirement as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Have I ever told you that you were a lousy salesman, Mr. President?" Leo asked.

Bartlet shook his head, "We're sending a bunch of doctors and some staff up to the Colonial Fleet, get the lay of the land such as it is. I'd like you to lead the mission." Leo looked stunned, so Bartlet continued, "At the moment, we know only what they are willing to tell us, and they know only as much as we are willing to show them. It's dirty, it's dangerous, and we desperately need to shed some light on the process so that we don't ram each other in the dark."

"Sir, you do remember that you are talking about sending people to a bunch of ships in orbit?  
>Perhaps a better metaphor could be found."<p>

"Leo, I need you to jump off a cliff for me… for us all."

"I'm not sure I like that metaphor any better."

"But you always do it anyway," the President reminded his old friend.

Leo shot the man he would willing follow into Hell his best grin. "Yes, sir. I do."

... to be continued ...


	13. Chapter 13

On July 20, 1969 when most of the world was huddled around televisions, Leo McGarry had other things on his mind. While Neil Armstrong was leaving his footprints on the moon, Captain Leo McGarry was in the cockpit of his F-105 Thunderchief flying within an inch of his life on a Wild Weasel air defense suppression mission over North Vietnam. When he had first started to fly, he told his mother his job on these the kinds of missions was to merely fly by and make sure the communist radar systems were blind so that other planes could come in and bomb.

He told her that so that she wouldn't worry.

In truth, it was his mission was to make the communists shoot at him so he and the rest of his squadron could fire missiles back along their air defense radar beams. At the exact moment Neil Armstrong was making pronouncements about having gone to the moon for all mankind, Leo had been in a delicate but deadly ballet dance with two surface to air missiles the size of telephone poles. When he landed that day, his plane riddled with shrapnel from a SAM that had exploded only a hundred feet from him, the peaceful features and hopeful possibilities of space seemed even farther away to him than they had that morning, despite seeming closer then ever to the rest of the world.

Leo had never had a drive to go into space. Nearly his entire squadron had applied to the astronaut program. Everyone but him. Now decades past when he was last behind the controls of an airplane, he was going to be the only one of the group to go into space. He appreciated the irony.

The ride up in the Raptor through the atmosphere had been bumpier than he had expected. One always thinks of space ships as being clean and having a smooth quiet engine, and not loud struggle through the atmosphere. "Is it always this loud?" he asked yelling over the engine noise to the young man who had been introduced as the electronic countermeasures officer.

Helo smiled back, and shook his head. "The engines are fighting the gravity well; as soon as we clear the atmosphere it'll be better."

"You know it would be a little reassuring if I was wearing that space suit too."

The Colonial smiled. "No worries, we usually only crash going down to planets… we're good at coming back up."

"That's not very reassuring."

"I don't know Leo, I think you'd look rather goofy in shiny olive green vinyl," teased Millicent Griffith, the United States Surgeon General and the nominal head of the delegation. "Besides you aren't the one going into space wearing high heels and a skirt."

"I always liked that uniform on you, Millie. Very sexy. It made me think you had ambitions to take over the world."

"What makes you think she doesn't?" Ellie Bartlet asked from her side.

"Is it the power of the uniform or the woman underneath? You always had really good taste in women, Leo," Millie teased her long-time friend.

"My taste in women always had really bad taste in men, which is usually why they were involved with me." Just as the last bit came out of his mouth, the violent shuttering of the ship stopped. There was a slight awkwardness as if the adults had been caught flirting by the young people. Leo decided to change the subject looking over at the Deputy National Security Adviser. "Commander Harper, I've never seen anyone quite that shade of green."

"Never been in a space craft before." She was gripping the straps of her seat restraint hard.

"Neither have I, it reminds me of a helicopter a bit though."

"Me too, sir," she answered a bit stiffly.

"You don't like flying, do you Commander?"

"Not really." Kate shook her head.

"Are you going to be sick?"

"I hope not!"

"Well, if you are, make sure you throw up on Dr. Griffith. I'm sure she'll be glad for the chance to wear shiny olive green vinyl." Millie was shot a full Leo McGarry trademark smirk.

"I think I'd rather pass on the entire throwing up thing, sir."

"I think I'd rather you did as well," Millie put in from next to Kate.

While everyone else in the cabin was participating in teasing Kate Harper, Ellie had fallen quiet and melted into the background. From her vantage point, she had a good view out the window and found herself watching the stars in awe. She'd always known that the physics of the atmosphere changed the color of light as it passed through the various layers, but she'd never expected the stars to look quite like this once past the bounds of the earth's atmosphere. It was like a million gemstones of every color tossed across the blackest velvet. "They should have sent poets."

The only one who noticed her comment was the Colonial officer sitting not far from her. He raised an eyebrow at her and made a questioning noise.

"They always send scientists on these sorts of missions and they should send poets to describe it."

He smiled back, "Sounds to me like they already did."

The landing on _Galactica_ had been both more and less than Kate had expected. She knew intellectually the magnitude of the fleet in orbit around her planet, but only once they were weaving between convoy of ships she could appreciate the scale much better. Even as they were approaching the Battlestar and it grew larger in the windows, she could see another military vessel on the other side of the fleet that was even bigger still.

When they landed, it didn't feel like some futuristic vessel from science fiction. It felt like the cramped quarters of an aircraft carrier at sea. The maintenance deck even smelled like an aircraft carrier with the twinges of grease and spent fuel that reminded her more of the _USS Abraham Lincoln_ than the _Starship Enterprise._

Kate had been struck by just how threadbare the crew really was, even when they had obviously turned out in their best uniforms. This was a working ship, and they obviously had better things to do than polish their shoes. There had been a brief ceremony on the flight deck before most of the group split up, with subgroups leaving to travel to other ships within the rag tag fleet. Ellie and Leo stayed on _Galactica _whileKate and the Surgeon General were being hurried off to _Colonial One_ for a press interview, of all things.

From Earth, it had been remarkable just how similar they were culturally, from neckties to language. It was as if these people had stepped out of a mirror universe and landed on their doorstep. Billy, President Roslin's aide, who had been sent back up with the Earth delegation to help coordinate their visit had set up the press interview in the briefing room on the President's ship. While Millie sent a short confirmation of their safe arrival back to NASA, Kate was asked to wait in what she soon realized was Roslin's own office. Everything was so compressed, and probably not without good reason Kate was reminded of Air Force One. The pressroom, the president's office, and her sleeping quarters were all within a few cabins of each other.

The West Wing condensed.

At first Kate had looked out the windows to get a better sense of the fleet of ships, but _Colonial One_ flew in a formation so close to _Galactica_ that the warship filled the windows on the port side. That fact alone probably spoke volumes about the relationship between the civilian government and the military in the Colonial society. Absently, she wondered how the American presidency would have evolved had it overlooked Norfolk instead of the Potomac.

After a bit she took the chance to look around the interior of the office, to see what it said to her about its occupant. Laura Roslin's desk was neat, but obviously well used; there were files and papers stacked in wire boxes on one side, a jar of pens and pencils, and a stapler. To Kate's analytical mind, the stapler probably said more about the Colonial government than anything else.

Reports crossed President Bartlet's desk quickly: he read them, or not, and signed them, or not, and they moved on to be handled by executive departments. Laura Roslin was her own executive department, the government in part or in whole. She was holding her civilization together with string and chewing gum.

There were flags behind the desk, and other trappings of a presidency that seemed familiar to Kate, even if the objects themselves were disturbing and unfamiliar. A picture of a man huddled before a mushroom cloud hung in a prominent place - a stark reminder of what these people had survived. She paused in front of something that didn't seem to belong. It was a dry erase board like one could find on the wall of someone's kitchen or in their dorm room, meant to remind the owner to pick up groceries or of an appointment.

This one had a number on it, written large and with no context. Kate was looking at it when Billy came in, pausing at the door to watch her. "It's the number of survivors. The totality of human civilization." The young man flushed a little and spoke again. "Or at least our part of it," he corrected. "The number is very important to her. Everything to her. She knows when every baby is born and when every person dies."

"That's a lot of responsibility for one person."

He smiled, his love for the Colonial President showing through. "She's gotten us this far."

Kate smiled, but didn't carry the conversation further, for her mind was already trying to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. Who was Laura Roslin?

Ellie Bartlet was lost. It was weird to be anywhere without a Secret Service escort. It had been decided that it would be safer for her if she were anonymous among the team. They hadn't told the Colonials about who she was. She'd been lost for half an hour, but she had been walking with purpose like she knew exactly where she was within the massive ship, both out of embarrassment and out of a vain hope that she would simply stumble upon sickbay by dumb luck.

A handsome man with a square jaw fell into step with her. "You're the poet."

She looked up at him and it took her a moment to place him. The young man stopped and extended his hand to her.

"Helo. You flew up here in my bird."

She laughed nervously and nodded. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you. The helmet makes your face look different. I am a bit lost…" She shook the offered hand.

"Where are you headed? I'll help you find it."

"The infirmary, I'm supposed to observe Doctor Cottle…"

He smiled, and it seemed to her as if there was something behind the smile she couldn't quite place. "You're walking in the wrong direction."

They turned around and began walking back in the direction she had come from. "Is your name really Helo? God of… sunlight?" She was stretching to remember her Greek mythology.

"It's a call sign. My name is actually Karl. You can call me that if you'd prefer, Doctor…."

"Bartlet. Eleanor Bartlet. If I'm calling you Karl you can call me Ellie."

He bowed his head a bit to her, and smiled. "It's an honor to meet you, Ellie."

… to be continued …


	14. Chapter 14

Colonel Saul Tigh was standing watch in _Galactica_'s Combat Information Center in the middle of the night while the Old Man was sleeping. In the back of his mind, he was going over the conversation he had with Roslin earlier in the day and wishing, not for the first time, that he hadn't gotten quite that drunk the night before. His continuous hangover was pounding his brain and would probably not be cured until he returned to his cabin after his duty shift and crawled back into a bottle.

Often when he talked to Roslin, Saul wished that he wasn't sober and today was certainly not an exception to that rule. Not that he disagreed with what she asked him to do. If he did, he was perfectly capable of telling the little schoolteacher to go to hell, President or not. Still it seemed like there were times when the two of them, the washed-up XO and the unprepared chief executive, were unnatural but powerful allies - when they weren't too busy being thorns in each other's sides.

He had thought their rare alliances would end after the attempted military coup along with his brief, and even he admitted, disastrous stint leading the fleet. However, there were still times when she came to him, and there were still times when they found themselves a powerful team in saving them all from Bill Adama's good intentions. Sometimes it was for the best that the Old Man not know exactly what was going on, and this was one of them.

The President had asked Tigh to help her by reminding the Earth governments that the Colonial fleet held the high ground and a military superiority to any of Earth's defenses. She had said it in the voice that made the XO think of her as a naïve little school teacher, except she always sounded the most naïve right before she surprised him with a cold-blooded statement.

She wanted the Earth delegation kept busy and with limited communication to their planet side government as much as possible. They weren't really hostages, she had assured him, but she was going to make their government think they were with the hopes that that might stop the diplomatic death spiral they were all in.

It never ceased to surprise him how cold she could be.

"Mr. Gaeta, have the CAP fly low into the atmosphere over several of the American cities. Break a few windows." A Viper would by necessity break the sound barrier as it flew through the atmosphere and cause a series of massive sonic booms.

Lieutenant Gaeta raised an eyebrow, but knew better than to question the XO on something relatively minor. Once the order was issued Tigh clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to the large display board and muttered to himself, low enough that he didn't think anyone else would hear, "Okay, Roslin, that should rattle some nerves."

If there was one thing Eleanor Bartlet was good at doing, it was being deliberately irritating with her own earnestness when she knew that it wasn't appreciated. She had made a game of doing that to her father for years. Right now, the target of her passive-aggressive enthusiasm was Dr. Cottle, _Galactica_'s chief surgeon and, it seemed, the fleet's de facto surgeon general. He was an irascible man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and the bedside manner of a few anesthesiologists she'd met in her brief career. Who needs a bedside manner when your patient is immediately going to be out like a light and dead to the world for several hours?

They hadn't started out badly, but he had become defensive when she asked one too many questions about an Asian-looking woman in a persistent coma.

"My gods, they've sent me a child. How long have you had a medical degree?"

"I found mine in a box of cracker jacks," she had answered, well aware that he wouldn't get the reference.

In truth, she wasn't sure who was happier when Helo had shown up, her or Cottle. "Can I borrow Dr. Bartlet for a bit?" he asked.

"If you can get her out from under my feet you can have her with a bow on top," the surgeon had muttered before looking at her. "It would have been a lot better if your people had sent up food and medicine instead of a bunch of kids not out of their first lab coats."

She smiled at him, not entirely disagreeing about the supply issue; it was something she intended to mention to Millie when she saw her. "I got my first lab coat when I was five, along with my first toy stethoscope."

"Sounds to me like she's holding her own, Doc," Helo put in, enjoying watching the pretty blonde spar with their CMO.

"You always had odd taste in women," the doctor shot to the ECO.

That comment drew an odd look from Ellie, but she didn't push for an answer as she left the sickbay with him. "What am I being borrowed for?"

"You liked watching out the window of the Raptor so much I thought I'd give you a better view. I just got off shift and traded for some time in the observation lounge."

"I didn't think there were any windows in this ship," she remarked walking next to him, and finding herself having to resist the urge to slip her arm into his. He was dressed in a blue uniform that made him seem even more dashing and clean cut than the flight suit had. It reminded her a little of the naval aide to her father who had asked her to dance at the first inaugural ball. "Are there windows on the other ships?"

"Most of the civilian ships. Because _Galactica _was built for combat, windows would be a liability. There really isn't a reason to look outside during combat operations. We have an observation lounge mostly just for the crew's enjoyment." He turned the wheel of the double re-enforced pressure door that cut the section off from the rest of the ship, and held it open for her.

The room had relatively comfortable chairs, and was dark with a beautiful view of space. Helo took her hand, guided her towards a seat next to the window, and settled them both down. "You said that they should have sent poets. I think I've been flying in space so long I'd forgotten that it was beautiful."

"I was stealing a bit, from a book about a scientist who is sent into space. When she tries to describe what she sees, she wishes they had sent a poet instead of a scientist because she doesn't know how to describe what is before her." Ellie sat up a bit and leaned against him so that she could crane her neck a bit and see the other ships in the Colonial fleet. "We're moving…"

"Just a bit farther out between your planet and the moon. One of our communications techs has been watching your news channels and there have been a lot of talk about firing missiles at us in orbit."

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Someone should remind CNN that they have a wider audience than they think. My father wouldn't launch missiles at a bunch of refugees."

"Your father?" He raised an eyebrow, and Ellie suddenly realized she'd said too much. She had promised Leo that she wouldn't tell anyone who she was other than a doctor. He could see she was frightened, and he smiled. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you said that. Who is your father?"

She looked into his eyes, as if trying to decide if she should trust this man she'd only just met, but it seemed like she could see into his soul. "My father is President Josiah Bartlet of the United States."

He watched her for a moment and nodded. "Don't worry, it can be our little secret. I'm surprised they let you come up here without security. On Caprica the president's family has… had body guards."

"I do, on Earth. We thought it would be safer if I was just another doctor."

"It probably is." She wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but decided against it. She instinctively knew though, if she ran into trouble up here that he was the one person she'd met so far she felt she could trust.

Kate Harper was unsurprised to find that she had a Colonial Marine escort as she had began moving about the fleet. Two shadows in black uniforms and close combat gear who didn't speak but stayed at a respectful distance and who she had little doubt would stop her from going anywhere she shouldn't.

Right now, she was walking along the flight deck of _Galactica_, stopping to watch the crew arming one of the Vipers. When she felt someone watching her, she turned around to see Admiral Adama. She smiled at him. "Morning, sir."

"Morning, Commander." She had become vaguely aware that the Colonials seemed to think she was higher ranking than her military rank actually dictated. It took a while for her to realize that that was because 'Commander' _was_ a higher rank within their military structure. She had decided not to disabuse them of the notion. "Are you being suitably impressed with your observation?"

"I really don't know much about the medical situation, Admiral, but from what Dr. Griffith tells me…"

He smiled at her, and for a moment, he reminded her of Admiral Fitzwallace the first time she'd tried to lie to him while she had worked for the CIA. "You aren't here to review our medical needs, Commander Harper. Unless I'm drastically mistaken in my cultural understanding, military officers who don't wear uniforms are usually spooks."

She wasn't exactly covert on this assignment, so she nodded. "That's a fair assessment."

"Which means you are here to see our military capabilities."

"Not entirely," she tried to counter.

"It's okay, Commander, I'm not mad. I'd have been surprised if your government hadn't sent someone like you. If they hadn't, I'd have been trying to figure out which doctor didn't seem to know much about medicine. It's better for both of our people if we're open and honest in our relations. Peace and friendship is built on trust and understanding."

She gave him a small smile. "I think you are very wise man, Admiral."

"Only when I'm not trying to be."

… to be continued …


	15. Chapter 15

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to welcome, in an intergalactic _Daily Show_ first, Laura Roslin." Laura fixed her jacket in one last nervous motion before walking out into the lights and the atmosphere of the live audience with a wave and a grin, stopping at Jon Stewart's desk to shake his hand.

She'd been shown a few tapes of the program before she'd agreed to come on, mostly because the White House was afraid that she wouldn't understand the nature of the show, but after watching she'd been more enthusiastic about coming.

"Interstellar, not intergalactic. Same galaxy," she corrected.

"Pashaw," Stewart waved dismissively, "Galaxies, stars, planets, what's the difference?"

"Quite a lot." She slipped easily into the banter.

"Than you'd give me a failing grade on a pop quiz," the comedian asked leaning forward on his desk a bit.

"I'm sure we could arrange some extra credit." The audience went wild, and there were a few wolf whistles.

"You know you've got that sexy school teacher thing down right, Madam President, but I have to say that you are the first Head of State I have had on the show who has legs worth looking at."

Laura was taken aback for a moment. "Thank you, I think."

"That's how I knew you were an alien…the legs, that is. I certainly don't think President Bartlet has legs like that."

"I don't know, you'd have to ask Mrs. Bartlet," she replied with mock innocence.

"Foul ball! Thinking about the Bartlets like that is like thinking about your parents having sex."

"I'm probably old enough to be your mother and you are flirting with me."

"But you're an alien, Laura, that's different."

"Where did I leave all those men ready to defend my honor?"

"In orbit? I suppose I should be asking you something about the settlement talks or how your people came here or all that jazz, but what I really want to know is… are you with the Admiral, or with that guy Zarek? Because I have a pool going with the girls in the crew and I think they want whichever one you aren't actually dating." There were a few screams from the audience with suggestions as to which she should be with.

"I'm not really dating either one of them," Laura said, hiding a bit of her discomfort with the question.

"Oh, so you are single. Can I take you up on that offer of extra credit now?"

"Aren't you married?"

"Details, details…"

CJ jumped as the Marine guard at the door of the White House Situation Room called out "Attention!" and the military officers in the room stood ramrod straight. Even Nancy McNally, who was standing next to her, stood just a little bit taller.

"As you were, people," the President dismissed as he reached the head of the table.

CJ inwardly winced when she saw that he was in shirtsleeves. It was past ten o'clock and she knew he had been on his way to the Residence.

"Mr. President," McNally began, "NORAD has reported that the Colonial Fleet has moved from low orbit to a position approximately half way between the Earth and the moon." The absence of Kate Harper was felt in the room as the National Security Adviser filled in for what would normally be the job of her deputy who was now up in that fleet.

"Have we received any word from the Colonials?" the President asked.

"Most of the embassy staff is with President Roslin in New Jersey." CJ offered.

"Why is she in New Jersey?"

CJ spoke up, "She's on Jon Stewart tonight, sir."

"In six years I've never been on _The Daily Show_. The woman is on the planet for a month and she's already doing comedy?"

"She's been trying to counter the public fear. We've been advising and encouraging her," CJ explained.

"There is another issue," Nancy broke in. "NORAD is also reporting atmospheric incursions by Colonial fighters over New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Seattle, Chicago, and a dozen other US and Canadian cities. By the time the Air Force scrambled fighters, their fighters had broken atmosphere again and were gone."

"Is there any innocent explanation for that kind of behavior?" the President asked with narrowing eyes.

"Several, but our best guess is that they were dual-purpose reconnaissance flights to do land surveys for potential landing sites."

"You don't do that over cities. They don't make good landing sites. What's your second best guess?"

"To remind us that our defenses aren't geared to space combat." McNally let the implication hang in the air. "The Colonial Fleet's new position is just enough outside of the planet's gravity well to make the missile calculations exponentially more difficult should we need to fire upon them."

CJ concluded, "She's reminding us that she has the high ground."

President Bartlet tapped his hand on the table, assimilating the information. "Find someone who isn't in New Jersey and get an explanation."

Jed Bartlet came into the bedroom and Abbey was already in bed watching the _Daily Show_. "She's good," Abbey commented as he sat down on top of the covers next to her.

"I saw bits of it earlier when they were playing the history of the Colonials using clips of old Ray Harryhausen movies," the President said as he took off his tie.

"I thought that it was funny."

"You have a warped sense of humor."

"Did you see the bit where Stephen Colbert came on?" she asked curiously.

"How much free time do you think I have?"

"Not enough. Did you see it?"

"No, I was rather busy."

"He came out and asked her to autograph his copy of _Left Behind_. And she did!"

Jed raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that the series of books about the end of the world…?"

"Yes."

"The one about the Antichrist?"

"Yes."

"Do you think she knew that?"

"I doubt she does anything without knowing precisely what she's doing."

Tory Foster had remained behind while the rest of the staff traveled by helicopter with the President. She knew that Bartlet's people would be sent into a tizzy as soon as they realized what the fleet's movements meant. Someone had to be in Washington to do the nasty business. It was her job to protect Roslin from this kind of thing, from being the bad guy, so that when the time came to pull back from the brink the President would have the credibility to do so.

She fiddled with the black leather gloves on her hand and looked up at the giant obelisk lit up in the night. There was a light snow falling, and the ice crystals reflected the light and twinkled like falling stars.

In the distance she saw a male figure, his hands buried deep in his pockets. "What took you so long, Josh?"

"I'm not crazy like you, and didn't want to stand around in a snow storm."

"Been a long time since I've gotten to stand in the snow, but that's not what I meant."

"Figuring out what you people mean seems to be a fine art. My boss wants to know why your side has started to make provocative moves."

"They aren't provocative if you can't respond," the political aide countered.

"What game do you think you're playing?" Josh asked with a raised eyebrow, slightly shocked and exasperated.

"We're not playing games, Josh. You may think that you have all the time in the world to address our concerns, but we don't. Your governments can start negotiating in good faith or we will have to take more extreme actions."

Josh watched her for a moment. "What kind of extreme action?"

She smiled, and didn't answer his question. "I understand your delegation up in the fleet has been doing good work. I'd hate to see something happen to them. Tell your boss to get off his ass before mine hands it to him."

Tory walked past him, leaving Josh stunned and standing alone in the snow.

… to be continued …


	16. Chapter 16

Dr. Jordan Kendall wrapped her arms around herself a bit tighter and wondered if she could ask the Marine guarding the door for her overcoat back. On an intellectual level she knew the White House Situation Room wasn't really that cold, but there was something about the tomb-like hole that sent a shiver down her spine.

Two years before she had been brought to this room by Leo McGarry and told that the United States Government had assassinated the Defense Minister of the world's third largest oil producing nation. Defusing the implications of deliberate murder wasn't something she ever thought she'd be doing when she decided to specialize in international law. If she wanted to defend unrepentant killing she could have gone into criminal law where she had some hope that the guilty would be punished and the innocent avenged. Nevertheless, justice and international law seldom had anything but a passing relationship, and she had long ago accepted that fact.

The truth was that when she had left the White House the last time after the Shareef affair she had hoped that she would never see the inside of this room ever again.

She was busy watching the little dots that she was sure were the ships in orbit crossing the large screen when she heard the door open behind her. The White House Chief of Staff was entering with several folders under her arms. "CJ, even Leo never sent the Secret Service to get me in the middle of the night."

CJ looked vaguely apologetic, "I'm sorry, Jordan. Something came up."

"I gathered. Kill anyone recently?" The question might have sounded like a joke, but sadly, it wasn't.

"Not that I know of."

"Thinking about it?"

"Probably not." Kendall was unnerved when CJ didn't immediately say no. The Chief of Staff gestured her to a seat. "Five days ago a team of medical experts traveled up to the Colonial Fleet to do an assessment of the conditions. Now they have moved the majority of their ships out of orbit and there have been 'technical problems' with communications."

"Isn't there an embassy across the street?"

"We have had a low level diplomatic contact that suggests that the medical team is being detained until we allow them to land."

"What was the nature of the contact?" The lawyer found herself engaging in the problem despite a big portion of her rational brain telling her to leave now.

"Josh Lyman and the Colonial President's senior political aide, Tory Foster, under the Washington Monument."

"Is that like a game of Clue? Mrs. White in the Study with the lead pipe? You sent Josh Lyman to handle diplomatic contacts? Are you insane?" She couldn't hold back the incredulous tone leaching into her voice. Would this administration ever learn?

"I ask myself that often, however there were legitimate reasons. Most of the President's staff was out of town…"

"Your boss or the Colonial President?"

"The one that wears skirts and heels. The only person we could contact over there was this aide, and Josh had prior contact with her."

"If she took most of her staff out of town, why did she leave her senior political aide behind?"

"It's just supposition at this point, but we suspect that they planned it that way."

"Why am I here, CJ? You guys do have an entire Department of State."

"Eleanor Bartlet was one of the doctors on the mission." The two woman locked eyes. "Right now, I have the President upstairs wanting to go off like Sherman marching through Georgia."

"You know that metaphor only works with a Southern accent." Jordan sat back in her chair, taking it all in. "Do we have a constitutional crisis?" When Zoey Bartlet was kidnapped, the President had stepped down in favor of the Speaker of the House.

"Do you want to have this conversation with Bob Russell or Jed Bartlet?" CJ shot her a 'don't fence with me look' and Jordan just nodded. "Come on now, I'll take you up to the lion's den."

With that preface, Jordan expected more anger, or at least more energy from the President when she stepped into the Oval Office. He was standing behind the Resolute Desk with his back to the room, looking out the window. It took her a moment for her to realize that he was looking up at the stars.

"Is she in, CJ?"

"I think so, sir," the Chief of Staff answered the President, and for the first time Jordan realized that she was already involved in this without even wanting to be. There was something about the people in the Bartlet White House that could convince her of anything.

"Doctor, what would happen if I had the FBI arrest Laura Roslin on charges of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment?"

Jordan was stunned for a moment, and licked her lips before answering. "Mr. President, you want to arrest the leader of a sovereign state for a crime you aren't sure has occurred in space? You do understand there are limits to your powers, right?"

The President got a dark look in his eyes. "Today you don't need to remind me that I can't do everything."

She inhaled a little and stepped forward. "Yes, sir, I do. That's exactly what my job is today. There are a number of diplomatic options for this situation, but arresting Roslin isn't one of them. We start with low-level contacts… and I don't mean Josh Lyman. We will work this out. We will get her home, Mr. President."

Jed nodded slowly, and waved to CJ. "Get the good doctor someone at Blair House."

CJ nodded as well. "Yes, sir."

As the two women started to walk out of the room, the President called out from behind his desk, "Dr. Kendall?" He waited for Jordan to look back at him. "Leo is up there too."

Jordan stood very still for a minute. She had dated Leo McGarry for a short time, but at the time, life had kept them from going very far with it. They always figured they had time, time after her next case, time after he was Chief of Staff. They hadn't found the time. Now she was standing in the Oval Office with something in common with Jed Bartlet. Their hearts were involved.

"I'm afraid we are having trouble interfacing our communications frequencies with yours, Commander. We are working on the problem and it should be fixed soon," the young black petty officer informed Kate just outside the CIC. It was the third day that they had not been able to contact Earth and she was beginning to suspect more than technical difficulties. Still, she smiled and thanked the young woman heading back towards the guest rooms that the _Galactica_ crew had set aside for them.

Leo, Millie, and Ellie were just settling down to a meal of noodles. "How is the food?"

"It's a bit like Ramen noodles," Ellie supplied, being the closest to college and eating the notoriously cheap food.

"No wonder they want to land so soon. The civilian fleet must have gotten most of the fresh fruit and supplies we brought up," Kate began as she walked farther into the room.

"They need it. Their nutritional options have been fairly limited. We're going to have to send up large amounts of basic medical supplies immediately, and that's not even counting vaccinations for common earthborn diseases," the Surgeon General said.

"We might have a problem." Kate fidgeted with her hands, and leaned against a wall. "I'm not entirely sure we're guests anymore."

"What?" Leo asked.

"There were more 'communications problems' today, and I overheard some of the pilots talking about recon missions. I think…we might be hostages." She added the last bit reluctantly.

"Hostages?" Dr. Griffith asked, alarmed.

"Has anyone noticed any other strange behavior, or reason that they might have become hostile?" Leo looked around the room, and slowly Ellie raised her hand.

"I've been making a nuisance of myself in the infirmary." Leo smiled at the young girl. She defiantly had her mother's gift for sass.

"This is probably something bigger than that, maybe something that occurred on the ground. I do think it's a positive sign that they are still letting us walk around with relative freedom. I just wanted to tell you all so that you could keep your ears open. Hopefully, we can get more information and figure out what is going on."

There were nods around the room and than Ellie spoke up again. "I think I know someone I can ask."

Ellie had caught Helo after he had just gotten off duty, and asked if there was someplace quiet they could talk. He brought her to a part of the ship she hadn't seen, dark and unused. To her surprise, it looked a bit like a museum… a looted museum… with velvet ropes and exhibit space. Seeing her surprise, Helo smiled at her. "When the war started, this ship was about to be retired and made into a museum ship. We've scavenged what we could from most of the displays, but we haven't had the resources to get this flight pod back up and running."

She walked up to a case that had a chrome metal robot in it. "Is this a Cylon?"

"An old one. They don't look like that anymore."

She looked at it for a moment, and then back to Helo. "Karl, are we being held prisoner?"

He stared at her for a moment and than his eyes went wide. "The crazy frakking bitch…" He whispiered the curse so low that Ellie could barely hear it.

"Who?"

"Roslin."

"You call the President a bitch?" she asked, a little surprised. He was after all a military officer. At least on Earth they discouraged that sort of thing.

"The first thing out of her mouth the moment I met her was a lie, and I'm not sure if I've seen her tell the truth ever since. She promised a friend's safety in one breath and once all the guns were lowered, she ordered her thrown out an airlock like a piece of garbage. The woman has ice water in her veins and she would do anything or say anything for her cause."

"What is her cause?"

"Survival. Roslin is a zealot, a manipulative, evil zealot." He could see that Ellie was surprised at the sudden vitriol directed towards his own leader.

"I met her, she doesn't seem that way."

"Do dictators ever seem that way? At least the smart ones? She believes she's doing the right thing, I'll grant her that… but what she will do to get to those ends…I wouldn't put anything past her." He looked around as if to make sure they were alone. "Listen, I'll try and find out what's going on with your group. The Old Man may support her Presidency, but it's not unlimited support, and somehow I doubt if you are hostages that he's involved. I don't think you are in real danger."

When Jordan Kendall worked for the United Nations she had met with torturers and murders, people she despised on a personal level. She always told herself that if she could save a single life by taking one of theirs she would, but she always believed that she was saving more lives by talking to them than any one act of vengeance could have accorded.

Justice was not only blind…she was grindingly slow.

Through out all of her years in international politics, never had Jordan been required stand in the office of someone who was holding someone she cared deeply for and have a civil conversation. As Jordan waited for the Colonial President, a part of her wondered if she would be able to do so today. Though she had seen the woman on television, Jordan was expecting something else – a more powerful presence, maybe? When the striking woman with a mane of red hair and glasses came into the room, Jordan had to pause. Was the normal-looking woman standing before her willing to be as harsh and heartless as the administration suspected she could be? That was what Jordan was here to find out. "Dr. Kendall? I understand the White House sent you over. Can I get you some tea?"

Polite. Why were people who did evil things always so polite? Leo McGarry had once teased her that she had left the UN when she discovered she could "buy things with money." The truth was Jordan had decided to leave after a 'private working' dinner with the Rwandan ambassador during which she discovered she just couldn't stomach another meal sitting across from a mass murderer who claimed he was a great humanitarian for his people while his hands wandered repeatedly up her leg.

Not that she thought Roslin was going to make a pass at her. Women were different from men, not better, just different. She remembered telling a young woman at a National Organization for Women conference that the world wouldn't be any better a place if there were more women leaders. There would be no end to war, no end to bloodshed. In fact, historically, women had been some of the most bloody and brutal leaders.

The difference was women usually did it for a cause. And the most common and deepest cause for any woman is her family—those she is charged with caring for. Therefore, no matter how polite Laura Roslin was, Jordan knew in her mind she could very well be sitting across a coffee table from Boadicea, queen of the Celtic tribe ready to burn the Romans out of Londinium.

"There is some concern among President Bartlet's advisors that our people are being held against their will up in your fleet," she began delicately, trying not to sound accusatory. "We haven't had much contact with them."

"I'm told there are some communications problems, solar radiation. I'm afraid that particle physics is a bit over my head," Roslin explained.

"That's good, because one of the doctors in that group is President Bartlet's daughter. If you were planning on playing a game with that team, it is important that you understand that it has a higher stake than you might have thought."

Roslin's eyes got a little big, and Jordan could easily believe she hadn't made the connection of just who Ellie Bartlet was. She seemed to take a few moments to think about it. "The delegation is perfectly fine, but I have a population who has looked to your people as our last hope and yet they are sitting in ships staring at the planet just out of reach. If we could just make a breakthrough in the negotiations, I would be much more confident that everyone involved would be much safer. Otherwise… I'm sure you know, Dr. Kendall, that desperate people do desperate things." Jordan could hear the tension in the President's voice, "And as much as the safety of President Bartlet's daughter is a concern… I have my people to worry about – all of them. Things will deteriorate fast."

Kendall nodded.

"Dr. Kendall?" President Roslin spoke after the lawyer had thought they were finished, "I am sure the communications problems will be cleared up this afternoon."

The meeting was short, but informative. She'd walk back across the street and pass the message on, having learned long ago diplomacy consisted largely of two languages—the spoken and the unspoken. An eye flick here, a small hand gesture there, and a shift in body position could make or break a treaty in a second. Negotiations weren't often about only what was said but what was unsaid as well. Wars had been fought over things left unsaid in the political bargaining rooms of the world. Roslin's hand gesture accompanying her comment about the complexity of the physics being beyond her, the change of her facial features at the mention of the President's daughter, and the passion in her eyes as she spoke about her people told Jordan all she needed to know.

Roslin was going to play this hand through to the end, but she was also willing to walk back from the brink.

… to be continued …


	17. Chapter 17

As she stood by the door of the Oval Office, Jordan absently wondered what higher power she might have offended to be stuck in this particular situation. Certainly it had to be a much a higher power than Jed Bartlet, who was pacing behind the ornate Resolute Desk like a caged animal. He had listened carefully to her impressions of the meeting with the Colonial President, but she was mildly disturbed at how few questions he had asked as she spoke.

And then the pacing started.

This wasn't the side of Bartlet she thought she would ever see, though she had heard rumors of its existence. His jacket was off, his sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were buried deep in his pockets as if he thought he might find a solution left in his pants from some other crisis. In a way, he looked like a frustrated boy.

"She really had the nerve to say desperate people do desperate things? Did she pick up a book of clichés?" CJ asked from the side, but Jordan didn't exactly answer.

In most things, the White House Chief of Staff was a powerful and important figure. In most diplomatic situations, this conversation should be happening with CJ, not the President. But this was not most situations, this was the world on the brink of disaster, and the only person who Jordan cared to make understand right now was a worried father.

"It was cliché but it communicated what she needed it to, a threat veiled in the message that they are desperate."

"She is desperate. I'm not convinced they are desperate," the President announced, speaking for the first time. "She is a barbarian."

_Dehumanizing the opponent, that's never a good sign_, Jordan thought. "Sir, I don't think that's a helpful way to think about this." She took a few steps farther into the lions den. "The Colonials are a civilization held together by a thread of hope. We have riots on Earth full of desperate, hopeless people. I'm not sure if we are in a position to judge what the conditions on those ships are like."

"We would be if they would let us talk to our people," Bartlet said with exasperation.

"She said the technical problems should be cleared up today, sir."

"This is not the behavior of civilized people. Civilized people do not hold medical missions hostage. Civilized people do not threaten unarmed people. Civilized people do not rattle sabers when they need help."

The President's tone rose with each sentence so much so Jordan wanted to step back against the emotion onslaught, but she steeled her nerves and did the opposite. Stepping toward the President, she shook her head. "Of course they do, sir."

CJ seemed about to interrupt her but stopped herself before she opened her mouth. It was Jordan's job to stand between the President and his immediate reaction.

"Excuse me?"

"Today, refugees all over the world threaten unarmed people and rattle sabers to get the attention of big countries. Make no mistake, Mr. President. Those are refugees in orbit and there is no reason to think they are any different from those found on Earth. There are millions of refugees around the world today who would, and do, light themselves on fire to get your attention. Not my attention, sir…your attention, because you are the leader of the richest and most powerful country on Earth. Refugees don't have powerful advocates or militaries to make their points, so the best they can do is starve, riot, and hope that the conscious of the rest of the world will awaken. When that doesn't work, they strap bombs to their chests and walk into crowded market places to get your attention."

Jordan's voice was even and steady, but with tinges of righteous fury. When she had been the General Counsel for the United Nations, she had faced American politicians who either wanted the UN to solve all their problems or thought the UN was the route of all their problems. Neither position was based in reality. Neither position had to walk through a refugee camp in Chad or the Congo and watch mothers hold out their dead or dying children in testament to their short and brutal lives.

Bartlet had stopped pacing and was watching her, so she took the chance to continue. "For more than half a century we've been happy to say that genocide is bad. To condemn those who commit it but we fall short of punishing them or doing anything to help the victims. We say we welcome those who need help, yet generations of people rot in displaced persons camps… not for years… but for decades. Those people up there are refugees, just like those in Gaza or Kundu. They are tired and scared and maybe they were expecting too much of us, but it doesn't serve us or them well to decide they are different from us, when they aren't. If one of the 90,000 people living in the Rafah Refugee Camp in Gaza could get your attention by breaking a few windows in some of our largest cities I think they would. The Colonials aren't doing anything different."

The silence in the Oval Office was heavy when Jordan finished, and for a moment, she wondered if she had gone too far. It was only interrupted by the buzz of the interoffice telephone and the voice of Debbie Fiderer. "Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have a telephone call from Ellie transferred from NASA."

Jordan thought she could see a wave of relief cross the President's face as he picked up the phone. CJ quietly ushered her out of the room and into the adjoining Chief of Staff's office. With the door gentling closed, she raised an eyebrow at the Washington lawyer, "Ate your Wheaties this morning, didn't you, Dr. Kendall?"

Lieutenant Louanne "Kat" Katraine lowered the stick of her Viper coming in fast over Vancouver, listening to the high-speed whirling of the cameras and the screaming her bird made as it punched through the atmosphere just over the speed of sound. This was her third recon flight, and probably her favorite part of this planet so far. The dense woods and mountains reminded her of home. She was zooming over Seattle when the missile warning alarm went off and she snapped out of her thoughts about the planet and started looking for the threat.

Kat saw the plume of smoke before she saw the missile. She pushed her Viper into a hard high-G turn trying to escape the thing, or at least get a firing solution on it. She could easily shoot it down where she was now, but she was over a populated area. The shrapnel from the missile and any over-fires from her guns would likely cause havoc on the ground.

Turning over the ocean, she looked over her shoulder to track the still pursuing missile before reversing thrusters and firing. The exploding Patriot missile sent fragments of metal into her wing and a fuel warning alarm started to blare at her among the other noises in the cockpit.

"Frak this…" She pulled up hard and cleared the atmosphere limping for home.

The pent up energy currently constrained within the Roosevelt Room of the White House vibrated throughout the West Wing. Margaret had remarked the two people in the glass room reminded her of animals in circus cages. Only this cage held both a lion and a tiger in it who hadn't quite decided whether or not to fight each other just because they were different or to align themselves against the force caging them.

Bill Adama paced the length of the largely glass-enclosed room. Its two main walls were red, which only served to fuel his ire. After Helo had come to him with Ellie Bartlett's concerns of delegation's true status on _Galactica_, Adama knew this game of cat and mouse had to end. The road the President was traveling on was too eerily familiar on a number of levels.

Immediately, he had Helo bring one of their guests to his quarters. Having expected the Lieutenant to return with either Commander Harper or the delegation's leader, Dr. Griffith, Bill Adama was surprised to find himself confronted with the delegation member he knew the least about—Leo McGarry.

Bill Adama was a soldier. He was an old solider, a survivor of two wars and he was by nature a superb strategist. Military strategy was his preference over political but the Admiral understood the political as well. In talking to Leo, Adama quickly recognized the complex geo-political situation they found themselves in with the people of Earth was rapidly spiraling down into a deeply emotional and highly personal conflict. Conflicts like this one, rooted in perceived mistrust and betrayals, rarely led to satisfactory outcomes for either party. Mostly they brought forth long-term strife and war. It was time for him to put an end to this.

And then word came in that one of his Vipers was coming in wounded.

His quick and highly terse conversation with Tigh confirmed what Bill had heard from both Helo and Leo. The President of the Colonies was thinking only of the destination—the outcome, and not the road on which she was traveling. It seemed to be her major blind spot. After issuing very precise orders concerning the discontinuation of any more 'reconnaissance' missions, the Admiral, along with Leo McGarry, departed _Galactica_ in a raptor bound for Andrews Air Force base.

Bill knew by going to Earth he was tipping the President's hand in her high stakes game of Triad. He also was fully aware he was offering himself up as a de facto hostage. His value as such was incredibly high and Laura was going to be beyond pissed at him, but he had to make her see the trees for the forest.

Adama silently watched the man who had accompanied him here. Bill had learned a lot about Leo McGarry over the last several hours through both observation and conversation. He had been surprised to discover a kindred spirit with a strikingly similar sense of loyalty, duty, and honor. He could tell by the slump in Leo's shoulders and his restricted movements as he paced on the opposite side of the room that Leo was just as uncertain about the outcome of the next few hours as Bill was.

The door to the Roosevelt Room opened for a young blonde woman who was followed by Laura Roslin with Tom Zarek in tow. Bill Adama did his best to hide his scowl at seeing the former terrorist.

"Ma'am, the Admiral is here to see you."

"Thank you, Donna."

"Leo, the President and CJ are wanting for you in the Oval."

Leo McGarry and Bill Adama exchanged looks. It was a glance between two pilots silently wishing each other success on a risky and possibly foolhardy, mission. They nodded to each other hoping they would see each other on the other side when this mess was all over.

"Thanks, Donna." Leo nodded to her. "Madame President, Mr. Zarek, it nice to see you again, if you will excuse me."

As Donna asked if she could bring the three Colonials anything, the Admiral spoke for the first time since his arrival in the White House.

"If you would be so kind as to show Mr. Zarek back to the negotiations, I need to speak with the President on a matter of fleet security." The blonde woman started to move and Zarek hesitated. Bill would swear he could feel the other man's hand on Laura's back. Laura turned slightly towards Zarek and a placed a hand on his arm.

"It's all right, Tom. I will be back with you in just a few moments." The familiarity at which Laura addressed the man made Bill's blood boil and his jaw clench.

After the former terrorist left, Adama turned to her. "I should have known better then to leave you down here alone with Zarek this long." If Bill Adama hadn't known better he would have sworn he could see ice forming on the glass of the room based on the President's posture alone. Laura Roslin merely crossed her arms over her chest, arched an eyebrow, and pinned him with a stare.

"What are you doing here, Bill? Your presence has jeopardized these negotiations."

Back ramrod straight, the Admiral pinned the President with a stare of his own and ignored her question. "Obviously, he," the venom and contempt in his voice was palatable, "has convinced you that veiled threats of global terrorism are acceptable. At least he only blew up buildings on one continent of one colony." He moved toward her to prevent the retort he could see forming on her lips. "Did you know one of doctors in the delegation is Bartlet's daughter? And another member is his friend of thirty years? How do you expect to bargain in good faith with a man when you hold his family hostage?"

Laura now advanced on him. "I will negotiate in whatever faith I choose, Admiral, which will serve our people best. No one is a hostage. No one was ever a hostage, but it is important that these people think I might go that far." The room wasn't large but it was bigger then her office on _Colonial One_ or his on _Galactica_ and they resembled two predators advancing across the plain to do battle. "I can't think about a dozen people when there are 40 plus thousand of them up there requiring… needing… demanding I think of them. This is a political matter."

This is a political matter. This is a military matter. He had used it as a way to cut her out of a decision he'd already made and she was doing the same to him now.

"With your actions you have threatened their entire planet, Laura. Don't you think as the leader of the most powerful nation on this planet, President Bartlet isn't thinking of the billions of people on this planet was well? You are here to build trust, not break windows with Viper flybys."

"What would you have me do, Bill? At the rate we are going, the fleet could still be in orbit for years. You know as well as I do the civilians won't stand for that." The weight of their world was pressing on her shoulders and he could see it settling in fine lines around her eyes. She was tired, they all were.

"This is our destination, Laura. This is Earth. You did it. You brought us here and you can bring us just this much farther. This is our chance to start again and you…" he paused, needing to regroup, to tread lightly. They hadn't had a conversation with this much potential for a catastrophic outcome since the Arrow.

"You can't do this at the price of your soul. I believe the prophecy is true, a dying leader has led us to Earth, but it is not a physical dying. It's a dying of the light behind your eyes. I understand your concern for the fleet. But you have decided to use the threat of force to get your way. They won't like it, Laura. Won't accept it." He had to drive this point home. "And in the end you won't like it either." The fire in her eyes changed and he knew she was remembering the first days of their escape.

"Madame President, this has to stop now. There has to be another way. Don't do this Laura, just don't. If you bully the people of this planet into taking us in, it will be two hundred years before we are tolerated and another hundred before we are accepted. You don't have the right to sentence our entire culture to ten generations of hatred and persecution." Her jaw flexed and her eyes glimmered. He had gotten through, reached the woman under the politician. "It is our responsibility to the fleet, to our people, to build the relationship with the people of Earth on trust not threats. This is not politics, this is our survival."

"And you have to be worthy of survival," she whispered with a smile.

"Yes, Laura, you do…we all do."

… to be continued …


	18. Chapter 18

"Admiral Adama has left for Andrews again, with Mr. Zarek," CJ announced putting the phone back in the cradle as President Bartlet sat down. She suspected that the Admiral was blaming Zarek for the games with flyovers, or that it was a diplomatic way to let Roslin retreat. Either way CJ was fairly certain that the Colonial President's military had called their President's bluff.

"Who decided to turn this into a shooting war?" Bartlet demanded and inwardly CJ winced at his tone.

"A Patriot Missile Battery from the Washington State National Guard out of Fort Lewis," explained General Nicolas Alexander, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Put young inexperienced crews in a stressful situation and it's bound to happen."

"Someone get the Governor of Washington on the phone and let her know that if we're going to start the first interplanetary war that I'd rather have someone else make that decision." There was a nod down the table.

General Alexander spoke again, "Sir, the Patriot crew might have been a blessing in disguise. We have been downloading the telemetry data from the missile and are attempting to analyze it to get better firing solutions on the Colonial craft. We also have begun flying Combat Air Patrols over the major cities… and are digging out test bed ASAT weapons systems. Unfortunately, they are more geared to combat Earth launched satellites in orbit, and not maneuverable craft."

CJ searched her memory for all the acronyms that she had learned in government service, recalling that he was talking about Anti-Satellite weapons.

"So if the Colonials are nice enough to fly in a straight line we're all good?" The President's temper was in full force.

"Essentially, sir," CJ confirmed.

Bartlet turned to CJ. "Is that woman still here?"

"President Roslin?"

"No, the Queen of Sheba." CJ noted the President's sass, as Mrs. Landingham had called it, was in full force as well.

The sarcasm was a bad sign. The day was full of bad signs, truthfully. If they lost control of the situation they would never get it back. "She's waiting for you, sir; she asked to talk to you alone."

Laura Roslin was alone in the Oval Office. Laura Roslin was alone everywhere, it seemed, but at this moment she felt it with a particular certainty. She had wanted to cry after Bill left. She had wanted to cry when Bill was there, if for no other reason than to prove to him and to herself that she was capable of that display of human emotion. But the tears did not come, nor did the words, and as always the Admiral walked away to leave the President to her thoughts.

They were here. They had made it. Why did Bill Adama have to be so frustratingly right? How had she had turned herself into this person? How a progressive education reformer had become this hard soul? How she had forgotten how to cry? Why she was always alone, even in a crowd? Today was not the time for her to ponder these awful questions of her own salvation.

Laura ran her hands along the top of one of the sofas and walked towards the President's desk, a heavy ornately carved piece of furniture that conveyed both permanence and authority. When she placed her hand along the top of the desk she could imagine the hard decisions made there, the years that desk sucked from the person who sat behind it. Just as she had been able to watch how a similar desk had taken from Richard Adar as much as it had given him.

Laura Roslin knew one thing for certain the moment she took the oath of office: power didn't corrupt, power stole. It stole life, it stole love, and it stole humanity like an assassin in the night. And she also knew today that she had freely given her soul to the office. The difference between what she saw in that her gift, and what Bill Adama saw in it, was that she wasn't sure she regretted it.

She picked up a picture frame off President Bartlet's desk in an effort to dismiss the dismal thoughts from her mind. Little children playing in the snow. Grandchildren perhaps? For someone who had spent so much of her life with children, there was a sad irony that she had never made time to have any herself. She had always thought she had time. They all had thought they had more time than they did. It was one of humanity's flaws.

Roslin put the picture down when she heard a door open behind her and she could feel a flush of color enter her face as Jed Bartlet watched her from across the room.

"You have lovely grandchildren."

"I hope to have lovely grandchildren tomorrow too, Madam President." His answer was cold, and she could tell by the tension in his body that he would rather be anywhere else than in a room with her. He thought she was a mad woman, and she had let him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the part of Laura that was still an idealistic schoolteacher asked if it was illusion or truth. "My military advisers inform me that the missile shot at one of your fighter was fired by a Washington State National Guard crew. It's never a good sign when reservists are put under this kind of pressure, but you have my sincere apology and my hopes that the pilot made it back to his ship safely."

"She did. Kat is a good pilot." Laura smiled and inhaled. "I think I am probably the one that owes you an apology though, and I hope that the missile crew is not disciplined too harshly. I was playing a high stakes game without thinking enough about the long-term consequences and repercussions."

"I'm not big on playing games with people's lives, President Roslin." Bartlet watched her as he walked farther into the room and sat down in chair.

"Believe it or not, neither am I. I wonder sometimes if the gods will forgive me for the lives on my hands."

He watched her for a bit but doubled back on the conversation. "You know your pilots by name?"

"Probably not good for my long term sanity but yes. I know their names. Sometimes I think when I'm looking out the windows of _Colonial One_ that I can tell who they are just by the way they flight their ships. Which ones are cautious and which ones are cocky… and which ones belong to the numbers that slowly tick off the population total."

He was still mad, livid, she guessed, and in this moment, Bartlet reminded her of Bill Adama. Righteous indignation personified. She wished she had that kind of fury to spare. These days when she was mad, it was a slow burning fire that seemed so much harder to control. Behind the anger in Jed Bartlet's eyes, she could see the dawn of a little understanding. "I'm not sure if I could ever order young men into combat if I knew their names before hand."

"I don't think I could have either…before I had to. There is so much I think we tell ourselves we would never do until you have no choice in the matter."

"You always have a choice."

Laura smiled again, this time more in sympathy. "I have learned, Mr. President, that righteousness is a luxury that you can not afford at the end of the world. I sincerely hope and pray that you never have to learn that lesson."

"Do you pray… to these gods of yours?"

"Am I religious?"

"Strange question to be asking, I suppose, but it seems to me that we have been talking about the complexities and ignoring the simplicities. The two of us at least."

"I've always had faith, but I don't think I would call myself religious most of my life." The President raised an eyebrow and she continued. "I think it was… two weeks after the attacks. Just long enough for us all to sleep and for the horror to sink in. We were all operating on so much adrenaline and lack of sleep that I don't think any of us really thought it was real until about then. Billy… my aide brought me this gift from the makeshift class of children that had been set up on one of the bigger ships. The teacher had asked the children to draw home..." Laura could here her own voice cracking. "She had asked them to draw their families and their homes and almost all the drawings had mushroom clouds. All I could think of is how I wanted to comfort these children. And how I couldn't. So many people walked away from faith… they blamed the gods for what had happened and all I could think of is that it was the sins of man, not the gods, we were atoning for. I didn't want to become a religious fanatic anymore than I wanted to be President, but the fates seem to have other plans for us all."

Jed didn't say anything as she spoke, but instead stood and walked towards her and placed a hand on her shoulder. When they walked into the room they were adversaries, yet when she looked up at him as her own tears began to flow she could see them forming at the corners of his eyes as well. Bartlet at first didn't seem to know what to say, and finally he just smiled and shook his head, "This is the time of year for confession and rebirth, Madam President. And forgiveness."

The first steps on the road back to humanity for Laura Roslin were tears. Tears shared with Josiah Bartlet.

Two Months Later

CJ Cregg had said recently that she had seen enough spacecraft in the last few weeks that she didn't think she could be awed by them anymore. Ellie Bartlet had just quietly laughed and told her not to think too soon. The roar of the mighty engines of _Colonial One_ as it approached for landing had to be the loudest sound she had heard in her life. She knew intellectually there were ships in orbit much bigger than this one, but the weight of it and the heft of the ship as it shook the ground on landing made CJ regret the earlier statement.

She looked across to Jed Bartlet, and not for the first time in recent days couldn't read what he was thinking behind his thoughtful eyes.

"We were lucky that the crisis was settled…"

The President smiled at her as the shadow of the space ship settled across his face. "What makes you think it was settled, CJ? It has just gotten much more complicated. The world has too. Beautifully, wonderfully, terribly complicated."


End file.
